The Anachron Incident
by Meraki S
Summary: After an exhausting away mission, Reed wants nothing more than to sleep. Unfortunately, a temporal anomaly has other plans. Forced to repeatedly relive the destruction of the Enterprise, Reed struggles to break free of the anomaly. He'll do anything to save his crew – even if the cost is his own life. Rated T for violence and language.
1. Chapter 1

Disclaimer: If Star Trek was mine I'd be rich and retired. I'm not. Therefore, Star Trek is not mine.

* * *

"Nice an' slow," Commander Charles Tucker III murmured, gripping the shuttle controls firmly with practiced hands as he eased Shuttlepod One into her berth inside the docking bay of the Enterprise. The small pod jolted slightly as it settled into the docking clamps. Tucker glanced sideways at his companion in the co-pilot's seat and grinned. "Just the way yew like it, eh, Loo-tenant?"

Lieutenant Malcolm Reed shot him a look of mixed exasperation and resignation as he ran through the power-down sequence for the shuttlepod. Tucker's teasing was not entirely unjustified, although Reed didn't see what was so funny about motion sickness. Apparently intense nausea was humorous when it happened to someone other than one's self.

"Nothing wrong with wanting an uneventful flight, Commander."

"Sure." Tucker grinned again, stretched expansively, and tapped the comm button on the shuttle pod's control panel. "We're in, Cap'n."

From outside the shuttle, Reed heard the low rumble of the Enterprise's docking bay hatch closing, indicating that Tucker's report was unnecessary.

 _"How was the flight, Trip?"_ Captain Jonathan Archer's voice crackled over the shuttle's comm system.

"A bit rough. We had some solar turbulence on th' way back that took out our starboard thruster. I'll see to fixin' it right away."

 _"After your debriefing. Meet me in my ready room after you go through decon, Commander, Lieutenant."_

"Yessir. Tucker out."

Tucker rose from his cramped seat and climbed out of the shuttle's hatch. Reed followed him, grateful for room to move properly. He'd had enough of small spaces to last him a decade.

A few days previously, while approaching a binary star system to investigate the gravimetric distortions that allowed three small planets to circle both stars simultaneously, the Enterprise had received a distress call from a species called the Zytexians. A small science vessel, the Sherien, had been damaged by a solar storm that left its warp engine crippled. After a successful first contact, Archer had sent Tucker and Reed to assist the Zytexians in the repair of their engines.

On the whole, the mission had been fairly routine. The Universal Translators had held up admirably – apparently the Zytexian language was similar enough to some they'd previously encountered that Ensign Hoshi Sato was able to configure the UT without difficulty – and Reed and Tucker had discovered that the damage to the Zytexians' warp core was relatively simple, if not quick, to repair. However, the mission had been unpleasant due to the fact that the Zytexian species was approximately forty percent smaller than humans, a fact which was consequently mirrored by their ship's design. The Sherien had been almost unbearably cramped. Even Reed, who was not a large man by human standards, had been unable to stand upright. It was a good thing Sato hadn't come along on the mission – her claustrophobia would certainly have been problematic in such a confined space.

Reed rubbed his neck surreptitiously as he stripped down to his underclothes inside the decontamination chamber, wincing at the dampness of the uniform he pulled off. Adding to the discomfort of undersized rooms and corridors had been the oppressive heat. Zytexians, like Vulcans, preferred temperatures significantly above human comfort level. Sub-Commander T'Pol would have been quite comfortable, Reed thought wryly. Unfortunately, she was spearheading the Enterprise's own study of the Anachron star system and had not accompanied him and Tucker on the away mission.

Another thing Zytexians shared with Vulcans was a delicate sense of smell. The aliens had been excruciatingly polite to their guests, but Reed had more than once seen a Zytexian turn away in disgust upon thinking itself unobserved. The humans' escort had showed them to a room filled with the stifling scent of perfume and encouraged them to try some of the 'essences' which were an important part of Zytexian tradition – a clever way, Reed thought, of trying to ease the burden of sweaty humans on sensitive Zytexian noses. He and Tucker had indulged the aliens by applying several of the odorous substances, some of which were so strongly scented that they made Reed light-headed. It was a good thing Doctor Phlox had given him a strong precautionary antihistamine medication before the mission, else his allergies would have been torturous. As it was, he had a growing headache behind his eyes to add to the crick in his neck.

The perfumes had apparently done little to mask the humans' strongly pungent odour, and for the duration of their stay on the Zytexian ship Reed had had the disconcerting feeling that the aliens were trying to avoid breathing deeply around them. However, the Zytexians' profuse gratitude for the engineering assistance had covered over any awkwardness. It would have taken months, they claimed, to do the work themselves. Theirs was a ship of scientists, not engineers.

For their part, Reed and Tucker had been as relieved as the Zytexians when it came time for them to return to the Enterprise. Two days in cramped, hot quarters, muggy with the sickly scent of perfumes, had given them a proper appreciation for the luxury of being able to stand and breathe properly. Even the shuttle, small as it was and now stinking with the pervasive odour of perfume, had been a spacious refuge in comparison with the Sherien.

Reed climbed into one of the decontamination unit's showers and scrubbed thoroughly with a blessedly unscented soap. When he finished, he turned the water cold and let it run over him until he was shivering. It felt like years since he'd been cool enough to get goose bumps.

Tucker was already out of the shower and towelling his hair dry when Reed emerged, slipping on a loose Sickbay gown preparatory to receiving the physical examination that was mandatory upon return after all multiple-day away missions.

"Feels amazin' to be cool agin," Tucker sighed blissfully, stretching his arms above his head as if to check that he still could. Reed agreed wholeheartedly, though he answered with only a nod.

"You are clear of all contaminants," Phlox appraised them, through the comm. The decontamination unit lock ground and clicked as it unlocked. Reed palmed it open and followed Tucker out into Sickbay.

"Hurry up, Doc," Trip said lazily, sliding onto a biobed with the air of one asking for haste by reason of obligation only. "Cap'n wants a debriefin' an' I've got a shuttle to fix."

Phlox clicked his tongue reprovingly. "Now, Commander, don't be in such a hurry. Surely your health is important enough to make time for, hm?"

Tucker rolled his eyes at Reed as the doctor pulled a curtain around the bed, allowing himself and Tucker privacy. Reed smiled briefly and lay back on his biobed to wait. He frowned and squinted against the fluorescent white glare of Sickbay lights, which wasn't helping his headache at all. He massaged the bridge of his nose gently until it became clear that wasn't helping either, then settled in to wait his turn to be examined. Phlox would give him an analgesic in a few minutes. In the meantime, he'd have to put up with a bit of pain. He closed his eyes, which slightly eased the dizziness caused by the intense headache. Sickbay lights glared red through his closed eyelids, then flicked to black.

"Lieutenant Reed," Phlox said, right beside him, "it's your turn."

Reed jerked upright, startled and disoriented. His head throbbed and he had to blink several times to clear his unaccountably foggy vision.

"Wh-What?"

"I'm ready to examine you," Phlox repeated patiently.

"But you just…" Surely it should have taken more than a few seconds to examine Tucker? Reed shook his head slightly to clear his confusion. He must have fallen asleep.

Phlox surveyed him critically. "Are you feeling all right, Lieutenant?"

"Yes, I'm fine." The answer came automatically. "I'm sorry, Doctor…I must have dozed off."

"That's hardly surprising," Phlox said disapprovingly. "I doubt you've gotten any worthwhile sleep in the last forty-eight hours."

That was true. Between the claustrophobic quarters and the warm, fetid atmosphere of the Zytexian ship, Reed had had difficulty sleeping for more than a few minutes at a time.

"Not to worry, Lieutenant," Phlox added, "You should be feeling more yourself after a good night's sleep. I recommend that you get some rest immediately after you report to the Captain, hm? You'll be off duty until late tomorrow morning at the very least."

Reed nodded and tolerated Phlox's examination with good grace. He'd disliked these routine examinations at first, believing them an unnecessary waste of time and invasion of privacy, but after several personal and second-hand experiences with unpleasant alien contagions, he had to admit that the precaution was less onerous than the potential consequences of skipping it. In time the check-ups had merged into the landscape of life on a starship. Besides, however much Phlox might poke and prod and be generally a busybody about all things related to physical or mental health, he was an excellent doctor. Reed had come to respect the Denobulan for his professional skills, though he tried as much as possible to avoid being the recipient of said skills.

Phlox ran a scanner over the front of Reed's body from head to toe, then repeated the process from behind. "Any complaints, Lieutenant? Pain, nausea?"

"Just a headache."

"Hm." Phlox applied firm pressure to Reed's cheekbones and temples with his fingers, making him wince. "This is uncomfortable?"

"Very," Reed admitted.

"This should help." Phlox applied a hypospray to Reed's neck, and the Lieutenant sighed with relief when the pain eased a few seconds later. "Allergies, I suspect." Reed nodded his agreement. "You seem to be in perfect health, Lieutenant, apart from fatigue. Be sure to get some rest as soon as possible, and come back tomorrow if the headache returns, hm?"

"Thanks, Doctor." The thought of collapsing into bed as soon as he'd finished his report to the Captain was an appealing fantasy, but Reed hadn't been in the armoury in almost three days and was itching to check in on his team and ensure that everything had gone smoothly in his absence.

Tucker was waiting by the door when Reed emerged from behind the curtain around his biobed, zipping up his clean uniform, and the two of them left Sickbay together.

"Good t'be back," Tucker said contentedly, echoing Reed's thoughts, as they traversed the roomy corridors toward the bridge and the Captain's ready room.

Since Tucker was the ranking officer on the away mission, and moreover the engineer in charge of their mission aboard the Sherien, Reed allowed him to lead the report, chipping in only to add particulars here and there. He fell silent as Tucker launched into an intricate explanation of the work the two of them had done on the other ship's warp core. The work Tucker had done, really; Reed had helped, but he was no expert engineer and would be on shaky terrain at best in trying to detail what exactly the Commander had done.

"Lieutenant? Malcolm?"

Reed became suddenly aware that both Tucker and Captain Archer were looking at him, waiting for an answer. He scrambled mentally for what the question had been, and came up empty. Archer was frowning, though not with anger.

"Are you alright, Malcolm?"

"Yes sir." Reed flushed, embarrassed. "I'm sorry, I'm just tired. What did you ask, sir?"

"I was wondering what you thought of the Zytexians' defensive capabilities. Is there anything that you learned that we could use on the Enterprise?"

Reed considered the question and shook his head doubtfully. The Zytexian science vessel had been minimally armed and possessed nothing as sophisticated as the Enterprise's phase cannons, torpedoes, and armour plating. "No sir. The weapons systems on their ship were negligible. I doubt we could learn from the Zytexians, at least in the way of defence. They're a pacifistic people."

"We might be able t' learn from them in th' way of perfumes," Tucker smirked. "Eh, Malcolm? D'you think yew could adapt those as a weapon?"

"Perfumes?" Archer looked from his Tactical Officer to his Chief Engineer, puzzled. "Is that a joke?"

"I wish it were, Cap'n. They've got an entire room jus' fer perfumes. Malcolm an' I practically had to bathe in 'em. Apparently we humans are offensive to their delicate sense o'smell. Personally I can't imagine we smelled worse than those perfumes."

Archer looked amused. "I can't really see you bathing in perfume, Trip."

"Never agin," Tucker said fervently. "I am not goin' back there, Cap'n." Inwardly, Reed agreed wholeheartedly. He had no desire to return to the noxious environment of the Zytexian ship.

"Let's hope you don't have to." Archer rose to his feet. Reed and Tucker followed suit. "You're dismissed, gentlemen. Get some rest – that shuttlepod can wait until tomorrow, Trip. T'Pol won't be finished with her scans here for another day."

"Sounds wonderful, Cap'n." Tucker yawned. "I'm exhausted. I'll see yew t'morrow, sir."

Reed wanted nothing more than to collapse into bed and sleep for ten hours, but he stopped by the armoury first. Ensign Tanner was in command of the shift. He was bent over one of the torpedo launchers when Reed entered, and didn't look up until Reed tapped him on the shoulder.

"Sir!" Tanner jumped to attention. "I didn't realise you'd returned yet, sir. Welcome back."

"Thank you, Ensign. Everything running smoothly?"

"Yes, sir!" Briefly, Tanner gave him a run-down of the previous two days. A bit of routine maintenance; a few sensory glitches here and there to break up the monotony, but all was well now. Tanner would readily have surrendered his command, but Reed refused.

"It's all yours, Ensign. I'm off to my quarters for some shut-eye."

"You do look tired, sir."

"I'll be in tomorrow morning before I go on Bridge duty. I'd like a report on that targeting sensor glitch then, Ensign." Reed turned to go.

"Yes sir." Tanner sounded slightly crestfallen. Reed glanced back, momentarily puzzled by the change in attitude. Tanner's shoulders slumped a little as he returned to his work on the torpedo launcher.

"One more thing, Ensign."

"Sir?"

Reed smiled slightly. "Well done. Congratulations on your first command."

Tanner brightened, his chin going up with pleased pride. "Thank you, sir!"

Reed was still smiling as he left the armoury. He wasn't given to praising his team – their best job was to be expected, and besides praise should come from the Captain, discipline from their CO. Still, he remembered the difference that a word of encouragement made when one was a young and eager ensign.

His quarters were dark and quiet except for the distant hum of the engine, and Reed did not bother to turn on the lights when he entered. He undressed by feel, folded his uniform over the back of his desk chair, and crawled, exhausted, into his bunk. Sleep came almost instantly, but not the deep, sound sleep he'd hoped for. Reed fell into the twilight doze of one who is too fatigued to stay awake but too tired to sleep properly. Lulled by the low purr of the warp core far away, he drifted in and out of a hazy slumber.

In the darkness of the room, something moved.

Reed felt more than heard the movement, but he was awake in a flash, his heart thudding against his ribs. He lay perfectly still and listened. There was no sound. It was too dark to see.

Something brushed against the bed, so lightly it was almost imperceptible. Reed's skin crawled. Unreasoningly, by instinct rather than conscious thought, he knew he was not alone. There was a sentient entity in his quarters, one that did not belong there and was hostile to him. In the blackness, something stalked him.

Reed uncoiled and sprang for the light switch in a single swift movement, tensed for danger, his back to the wall. The lights came on, blindingly bright for a moment. Out of the corner of his squinting eyes, a shadow flickered at the door of the bathroom. Reed stood motionlessly for a long time before cautiously retrieving his phase pistol from the desk. He advanced slowly on the bathroom door, pistol readied.

"Who's there?"

No answer. He hadn't expected one.

He flung the bathroom door open with a sudden motion and swept the small room with the muzzle of the pistol, expecting any second to see a hostile alien.

The bathroom was completely deserted.

Reed sat up in a cold sweat, gasping for breath and disoriented. He was sitting on something hard and flat, and his surroundings were dark and chilly. He groped around him for anything familiar.

It was the floor of his quarters, cold and unyielding beneath him. In the dimness, he could just make out the outline of his bed a few feet away.

Unsteadily, Reed got to his feet and staggered to the light. Its cheery glow revealed his quarters, exactly as they ought to be, except – the bed was neatly made. The bathroom door was closed, and his uniform was not on the chair. Reed glanced down and realised with a shock that he was wearing it. His phase pistol was clipped securely in its holster.

Reed went to the bathroom door and opened it warily. Nothing was out of place.

Had he somehow, inadvertently fallen asleep before he'd undressed and gotten into bed? Had he been dreaming? Reed resisted the urge to comm Sub-Commander T'Pol and have her perform an internal sensor sweep of the entire ship for an alien presence. _It was a dream,_ he told himself firmly. He checked the chronometer: 2058 hours, ship's time. That didn't help. He'd left the bridge around 2015 hours, but he did not know what time it ought to be. He hadn't checked the time after leaving the armoury. It felt much later than the chronometer showed.

Unnerved by the vivid reality of the dream, Reed undressed slowly, stoically ignoring the creeping sense of déjà vu he felt as he laid the neatly-folded uniform on his desk chair. He turned off the light and lay on top of the blankets on his bunk, staring up at the unseen ceiling, still hyper-alert from recollected alarm.

If it had been a dream, then when had he fallen asleep? Reed clearly remembered folding his uniform and climbing into bed. Surely he hadn't put his uniform back on while sleeping?

 _It was just a dream._ He tried to force his racing mind to calm down. _You must have sat down for a moment, maybe to take off your boots. You fell asleep and had a weird dream. Relax, Lieutenant. Sleep._

But his veins still thrummed with adrenaline, and it was over an hour before Reed drifted into a troubled sleep.

* * *

A blaring alarm sliced through Reed's uneasy slumber, jerking him to his feet almost before his eyes opened.

 _"Tactical alert!"_ Archer's voice cut crisply through the comm system. _"All senior officers to the –_ "

The ship shook, sending Reed stumbling drunkenly across the room. He barely managed to catch himself against the desk. From somewhere on the hull of the ship, there was a horrible searing screech of weapons fire.

 _"Tactical alert,"_ the comm screeched, weakly. _"Senior officers report –_ "

The comm died, as did the flashing red light of the tactical alert. Reed snatched for his uniform, throwing it on haphazardly on his way across the room. He hit the door button and in the darkness ran face-first into the stubbornly closed door. He swore aloud at the sensation of blood trickling down his face. The ship trembled again, more distantly.

 _Think._ Working by feel, Reed returned to his desk and rifled through the drawers until his hand stumbled upon a flashlight. By its bright glow, he pulled a panel from the wall and disabled the door lock. The corridor outside was filled with smoke and he banged his head hard on something metal that shouldn't have been hanging over his doorway. Dazed, Reed stumbled away, aiming his flashlight around somewhat at random. Its light, dispersed oddly by the smoke, showed a scene of destruction. Several of the ceiling panels in the hall had fallen, sending debris to the floor in jumbled piles.

 _"- to senior staff. Do you read? Repeat, Tucker to senior staff, do you read?"_ In his breast pocket, Reed's communicator crackled to life with Commander Tucker's panicked voice. _"Senior staff, do you read me? Is anyone there?"_

Reed snatched it out of his pocket. "Reed to Tucker. What's going on, Commander?"

 _"I don't know, we're under attack. Where are you?"_

"I'm on B-deck near my quarters. Why don't we have backup power?"

 _"I don't know. I'm trying to get to engineering, but there's a lot of damage on E-Deck."_ The ship shook again, drawing a torrent of cursing from Tucker. _"Fuck! See if you can get t'the bridge, Malcolm. I can't git the Cap'n or T'Pol or Hoshi."_

"Right." Up one level – that shouldn't be too difficult, even without working turbolifts. Reed made his way cautiously along the corridor to the nearest access tunnel. The hatch was jammed. With grim determination, he drew his phase pistol and fired continuously until the edges of the hatch melted and the cover clattered off. Ignoring the heat singing at him as he climbed through, Reed crawled up the ladder and forced his way through the stiff hatch at the top.

The bridge was in chaos. It was so filled with smoke that Reed could hardly see anything except for the hot orange flickering of fire in several places. He had to shout over the roar of flame and renewed weapons-fire from outside.

"Hello! Is anyone here? Captain?"

"Lieutenant Reed!"

He looked left. T'Pol sat on the floor, leaning against a twisted glob that had once been the science station. Her right leg was trapped under a chunk of metal nearly the size of her entire body. The far edge of it glowed with heat.

"Sub-Commander!" He hurried to her side. "What happened? Are you alright, where's the Captain?"

"We have been attacked," T'Pol said, her voice calm though hoarse with pain. "An unidentified ship fired on us. I do not know where the Captain is."

Reed bent over the metal holding her down and got a firm hold on it. The heat scorched his fingertips as he heaved, but the strength of adrenaline allowed him to lift it just enough for the Vulcan to pull her leg free.

"I believe my leg is broken," T'Pol observed with uncanny coolness. Based on the way it was twisted, Reed agreed. The leg of her uniform was singed through in several places, and green blood seeped out onto the charred red-orange fabric.

"Can you get to the hatch? I'll try to find the others."

He left at her nod and threaded his way carefully through fallen, twisted pieces of debris and patches of flame. The communications station was empty. Beside it was a body, mangled beyond recognition. It was with a shock of relief that Reed managed to make out that the stripe on the uniform was red, not the yellow that Archer and Ensign Travis Mayweather wore or Sato's blue. Shame crowded in immediately after relief; someone was dead, what right had he to wish death on an innocent crewman rather than on the Captain, Mayweather, or Sato? He pushed the feeling away. There was no time for it.

"Captain Archer!" Reed shouted over the noise. "Hoshi! Travis! Is anyone here?"

"Malcolm!" He heard Sato's shrill cry, faint against the background of chaos. He sought her ought, unerringly, and found her crouched by the navigational station, cradling Mayweather's head in her lap. The young navigator was unmoving, but a quick touch to his pulse point showed that he was unconscious, not dead.

"Are you hurt?"

Sato shook her head. "Help me," she begged. "We've got to get Travis out of here!"

With great difficulty, Reed and Sato dragged Mayweather to the access tunnel hatch. Reed stopped there.

"I've got to find the Captain. Hoshi, where is he?"

Her face was streaked with tears and sweat, but she answered strongly. "The last I saw he was at the tactical station. Malcolm, I don't think –"

Reed was already turning away, toward where the tactical station should be. A gigantic metal beam protruded grotesquely from it, the other end jammed against the ceiling. He climbed around it with difficulty and stopped short.

Archer lay sprawled on his back, his head lolling sideways against his shoulder. The end of the gigantic metal beam thrust out of his stomach. His lower torso was completely crushed. Blood pooled around him.

Incredibly, he was still alive. As Reed knelt beside his fallen Captain, Archer's green eyes blinked hazily up at him. Reed cupped his hand under the other man's head, cushioning it from the hard floor.

"Captain!"

He had seen death before, and he knew he was seeing it again. Reed had never been an optimist, nor one to lie to comfort others, but words spilled involuntarily from his mouth as he tried to hide from his Captain what he knew to be the terrible truth.

"We'll get you out of here, sir. You're going to be fine. Just hang on, sir, it's going to be okay."

Archer's lips moved soundlessly, and Reed bent closer to hear the murmured words. "Was – a ship –"

"It's gone, sir." Reed didn't know if that was true or not. He didn't care. "We fought them off. You'll be alright, sir, Phlox is on his way. Stay with me."

"My crew, Malcolm," Archer whispered, and drew no more breaths.

"Captain! Stay with me! Dammit, don't you dare –!" Insubordination, whispered a faint part of his mind that had been his civilised self. "Sir! Stay with me, you'll be fine!" Reed was choking – crying, he thought for a moment, but then he became aware of the sharp pungency of smoke clogging his lungs. Coughing and gasping for breath, he scrambled away from his Captain's dead body and the spreading fires on the bridge. T'Pol, Sato, and Mayweather were gone when he reached the emergency hatch. He scrambled in and slammed it shut against the billowing smoke. When he reached the bottom of the tube and the comparative quiet of B-deck, he found the three of them waiting. The emergency lighting was on now, and their faces were strange and otherworldly in the hazy dimness. T'Pol was propped against the wall, pale and sweaty despite her Vulcan ability to suppress pain, and Mayweather, though awake now, wobbled unsteadily as he stood.

"The Captain's dead," Reed said. The words rang hollowly in his mouth. "We've got to get T'Pol to Sickbay. You too, Travis." His mind was completely clear, and painfully sharp. "Travis, can you help T'Pol? Hoshi and I will try to get to engineering to help Tucker."

"I can do it, sir." Shakily, Travis helped T'Pol to her feet and the four of them set off along the smoky corridors of B-deck. At a split in the hall they parted ways without pausing or speaking. _Good luck_ , Reed didn't say. _I hope we see you again_.

Labouring to breathe through the thickening smoke, Sato and Reed pried open the next access tunnel port and climbed down the ladder. The tunnel took them down two levels. D-deck was quieter and the air cleaner, but its halls were eerily deserted. Perhaps the rest of the crew was trapped in their quarters. The thought made Reed's spine prickle. More likely they were at their posts or trying to help from some functional portion of the ship. That, or they were dead.

 _"Tucker to Reed, come in."_

Reed jumped and swore inwardly. In his haste to get to engineering with Sato, he'd forgotten to report back to Tucker.

"Reed here. I've got Hoshi. T'Pol and Mayweather are alive too." The awful enormity of what he had to say swelled up in front of him and stuck in his throat when he tried to speak it aloud.

 _"Where's the Cap'n, Malcolm?"_

The block was gone as suddenly as it had appeared. "Captain Archer is dead."

There was no reply. Reed coughed against the smoke, which was thickening again. "Commander? Did you hear me? I said –"

 _"I heard yew, Malcolm."_ Tucker's voice was unreadable over the comm. _"Just git down here, we need –"_

The ship shook under an impact that seemed almost to tear the world in two. Reed and Sato were thrown to the deck, and in the confusion the communicator slipped from Reed's hand and clattered across the floor. Reed's ears rang with the force of the blast. All he could hear was screaming – tinny, distant, terrified. Then he realised he actually was hearing screaming. The communicator, several metres away, was still on, its channel open. Reed scrambled for it.

"Reed to Tucker! Tucker, are you there?"

More screaming. Then a voice, Tucker's, commanding but shrill with hysteria.

 _"Tucker to all hands, git out of here! We're losing containment, the core's goin'! Git out, git out! Evacuate the ship!"_

Deep inside its bowels, the Enterprise trembled with forces it could not withstand. Reed leapt to his feet, tugging Sato up alongside him, and they sprinted through the empty halls of D-deck toward the port escape pod. Around them, the ship quivered violently in its death throes. Reed tore open the escape pod hatch and urged Sato inside. He turned back, staring helplessly into the smoke.

"Is anyone there!? Hurry! We're abandoning ship!"

 _Travis,_ he thought wildly. _T'Pol. Phlox._ But there was no time.

"Malcolm!" Sato screamed. "Get in!"

Something gave way in the heart of the ship. A roaring tremble built; ten metres away, the bulkhead collapsed under enormous pressure and a wall of fire surged onto D-deck.

"Malcolm!"

Reed dove into the escape pod, slamming the hatch behind him. He heard the hermetic seal lock into place with a sickening squelch, and then the pod jolted, pulling away from the ship. Sato's practiced fingers flew across the controls of the pod. Through the small port, Reed saw the ship shrinking behind them. Fire licked from countless points; the bridge was an inferno. Reed counted the other escape pods. _Two, three_. A shuttlepod fled from the ship's belly. Seconds stretched into millennia of agonised waiting.

The ship exploded.

Blue-white fire leapt outward, soundless in the vacuum of space, consuming the Enterprise. The escape pod surged forward with a sickening crunch; sparks showered around them. The pod rolled, tumbled, came up with its port facing back toward the ship again. But there was no ship any longer, only a field of sparkling scraps lit by the golden light of the Anachron stars.

 _Beautiful_ , was the first thought that registered in Reed's mind. _It's so beautiful._ Heavenly light shone off a thousand, a million scraps of the dead Enterprise. How many dozens of those scraps were bodies? Which one of them was the Captain, which one was T'Pol or Phlox or Travis?

"Escape pod B to…anyone," Sato said, behind him. It was a disoriented second before Reed realised she was trying to contact the other escapees. "Do you read? Repeat, this is Ensign Sato to anyone who's left. Come in." She was remarkably calm, though her voice trembled slightly.

 _"This is Ensign Hutchinson. I'm in Escape Pod C."_ Hutchinson's voice shook; much worse than Hoshi's, Reed thought.

"We read you, Ensign. Who's with you?"

 _"Crewman Cutler, ma'am, and Corporal Ryan. But he's hurt bad, I don't know if he'll make it."_

"There should be a medkit in the pod," Sato said, still completely calm. "Port side compartment."

 _"Yes ma'am, Cutler's seeing to him."_

"Good. Come about towards us; bearing one-eight-three mark four. Try to hail the other pods and the shuttle."

 _"Yes ma'am."_

Sato's hands hurried on the controls. Her fingers were steady. "Ensign Sato to Shuttlepod Two. Come in, Shuttlepod Two."

 _"Ensign, this is Shuttlepod Two, Commander Kelby speaking. Do you read?"_

"I read, Commander. Who do you have with you?"

More conversation followed. Reed struggled to keep up with what was happening around him. Shuttlepod Two had Kelby, Crewmen Fletcher and Jenkins, and Lieutenant Fincke, all from engineering. Escape Pod C reported back; they'd made contact with Escape Pod F, which had Crewman Eddie and Ensign Hart. Pod F also reported the destruction of Pod G; they'd been too close in the blast.

That was all that was left. Eleven, out of a crew of eighty-three. Tucker had gone down with the ship, along with the Captain, T'Pol, Phlox, Travis…

Something Sato said caught Reed's inexplicably wandering attention. "Lieutenant Reed's with me, but he has a concussion."

 _Oh_. That explained the haziness, his inability to grasp the enormity of his ship's destruction.

He heard Sato talking and understood in a vague sort of way that she had temporarily taken command of the tiny fleet of escapees and had set a course away from the wreck, back toward the nearest inhabited system half a light year away. Far away. Too far. At sub-light speeds, they'd die of old age before they were a quarter of the way to the system. And there were plenty of things they'd die of before old age: starvation, dehydration, oxygen deprivation. But what else could they do?

Reed gazed back out the port at the binary stars and the shimmering debris field, growing smaller in the distance, and tried to condense the inconceivable size of the tragedy into something his rattled mind could acknowledge. He couldn't do it.

Something was making a horrible, bestial groan of pain and terror and bereavement, and not until Sato slid out from behind the controls and wrapped her arms around his shoulders did Reed realise that it was him.


	2. Chapter 2

Disclaimer: Again, not mine.

* * *

Reed sat up in a cold sweat, gasping and entirely disoriented. The phantom scent of smoke lingered in his nose and the imprint of glittering sparks of debris and bodies flashed in his mind like a the ghostly after-image of a bright light that one has gazed directly into. He was in complete darkness. The world around him was silent, offering no explanation to his befuddled mind. Fighting nausea, he got slowly to his feet and felt around for anything to reorient himself. He encountered a wall, and by accident his hand struck a switch. A light flicked on, illuminating the clean, Spartan interior of his own quarters on the Enterprise: his bed, neatly made. The bathroom door, closed. His desk chair, pushed in and empty of clothes. Reed stared wildly around, then down at his own blue-clad arms. He was wearing his uniform, as if he'd never taken it off.

Shaking badly, Reed ran his hands through his damp hair and touched the wall softly to reassure himself. It had been a dream, surely it had been a dream. But it had been so very _real._

The chronometer read 2058 hours, ship's time.

Hesitantly, Reed pressed the comm button beside his door. "Lieutenant Reed to Commander Tucker." His voice trembled slightly, and he steadied it with effort. For a long moment, there was no reply. At last Tucker spoke, sounding sleepy and irked.

 _"Y'oughtta be asleep, Loo-tenant."_ His voice was slurred with drowsiness. _"Like I was,"_ he added pointedly.

Reed sighed with relief so profound it made his legs weak. It hadn't been real; only a dream.

"I apologise, Commander. I didn't mean to wake you."

 _"What d'yew want, Malcolm?"_

Reed hesitated. "Nothing important. It can wait till morning." He heard Tucker groan with frustration. "Sorry, sir. Reed out."

He stood in the silence and breathed, waiting for his racing heart to slowly return to its normal pace. When he felt calmer, Reed crossed the room and stripped off his uniform, shuddering at the feeling of familiarity accompanying the action. He turned to sink onto his bed, but on second thought returned to the comm panel, clearing his throat to be sure his voice would be steady.

"Lieutenant Reed to Captain Archer."

 _"Archer here. I thought you'd be sleeping, Malcolm."_

"About to, sir." Reed hesitated, aware that his request would sound odd at best. "Sir, if we…happen to come across anything strange, please let me know right away."

 _"Anything strange?"_ Reed could picture Archer's eyebrows creeping up his forehead. He resisted the urge to pound his head gently against the comm panel.

"Yes, sir. If we detect an unidentified vessel, or…something of that nature."

There was a distinct chuckle in Archer's voice. _"Eager for some action already, Lieutenant?"_

Reed's cheeks warmed. "Er –"

 _"Understood, Lieutenant. I'll comm you at the first sensor peep."_ The comm channel closed on Archer saying something in an amused voice to the rest of the bridge crew. Reed couldn't make out what he said, but he had a good guess. Feeling flustered, he switched the lights off and lay down on his bed. He doubted he'd sleep anytime soon, but exhaustion took him unawares despite the tingle of unease still prickling in his gut.

* * *

 _"Ensign Sato to Lieutenant Reed."_

The comm dragged Reed into groggy wakefulness from a sleep so deep it left him dazed. He was not sure what had roused him until the hail was repeated.

 _"Ensign Sato to Lieutenant Reed."_

There was something very important about him being woken at – a glance showed him that the time was 2344 hours. Reed gaped blankly at the chronometer's glowing red figures. He had an unsettling feeling that the time was wrong, and moreover that there was an important reason he was being hailed, which he should know. Stumbling slightly with tiredness, he wove over to the comm panel.

"Reed here."

 _"We found you a sensor peep, sir."_

Sato sounded amused with herself. Reed's mind struggled and failed to translate this comment. He was too tired to puzzle out the familiarity of the words. "Ensign?"

 _"You asked to be notified if we detected an alien vessel, sir."_

Memory shot through him like a disruptor bolt. Reed leaned heavily on the wall, suddenly wide awake and wishing he wasn't. He fought the recollection of dream-Hoshi's arms around him and the sparkling confetti of the lifeless Enterprise, and subdued it with difficulty. Even after a few hours' solid sleep, the memory was as vividly real as ever.

"Understood, Ensign. Thank you."

He dressed in a feverish hurry that he refused to explain to himself, but which had something to do with the creeping sensation of recognition in his stomach.

The bridge was oddly relaxed when he arrived there. For some reason, he'd been expecting tension. Reed glanced subconsciously up at the ceiling over the tactical station, currently manned by Crewman Alex. A thick support brace was visible on the ceiling. It started from the bulkhead and crossed the ceiling directly to join four similar supports above the Captain's chair. Reed tracked a trajectory absently with his eyes. If the beam broke a metre or so from the wall of the bridge, it could conceivably swing down and impale the tactical station…

"Malcolm?" The Captain's voice made Reed startle. "What are you doing here? You're not back on duty until tomorrow."

Reed felt an inexplicable sense of relief at seeing Archer sitting in the Captain's chair, perfectly normal and alive. "Sir, Ensign Sato said we've detected an alien ship."

"Yes." Archer was momentarily confused, then smiled in understanding. "Ah. Your 'strange thing,' Lieutenant?"

Reed shifted awkwardly. Archer saved him from further embarrassment by continuing. "There's nothing to worry about, Malcolm. They're just here to study the stars, like us."

"You're sure it's not the Zytexians again, sir?"

"You really don't want to go back to that ship, do you?" Archer smiled. "I don't blame you, after seeing the schematics. No, it's not the Zytexians. They left for their homeworld about an hour ago."

"Have you hailed this ship, sir?"

"They didn't respond. I expect they're too busy for first contacts."

Reed frowned, displeased. Three ships arriving to study the same star system within three days…surely that was unusual? The Anachron system had existed for thousands of years. What was so special about studying the stars at this particular time? Two ships was unlikely, but a very reasonable coincidence. But three ships – the Zytexians, the Enterprise, and now this ship – three times was a pattern. Reed disliked patterns that masqueraded as coincidences. Far too often an underlying reason lurked beneath such patterns.

"Something wrong, Malcolm?"

Reed glanced back at the Captain, disconcerted at being caught with his attention wandering. "No sir." He moved toward the tactical station and Crewman Alex. "I'll take over here, Crewman."

Alex glanced over one red-striped shoulder at Reed, then at the Captain, uncertainly. Archer stood, surprised.

"Lieutenant, you're off duty until tomorrow morning," the Captain reminded.

"I don't mind, sir."

"You've been away for two days, Malcolm. You need to get some rest. Don't worry, the tactical station's not going anywhere. I'm sure Crewman Alex will hold it down for you."

Reed hesitated, and Archer's smile melted off a little. "That's not a suggestion, Lieutenant."

Itching with aggravation at being treated like an errant child, Reed came stiffly to attention. "Aye, sir."

"See you tomorrow, Lieutenant." Archer's voice followed him into the turbolift, his words a peace offering to dissipate the tension of almost-ordering his Tactical Officer off the bridge.

Despite the clear intent of the Captain's order, Reed did not return to his quarters. Wired with uncomfortable nervous energy, he wandered down to E-deck and sat in the deserted mess hall, staring broodingly out of the window at the angled glow of the nearby stars. Although the window did not face the stars directly, the intense radiance filtered through the ports to give the mess hall an unearthly golden glow. Reed could almost imagine that he felt its heat on his face. The metal table was cold on his arms through his uniform sleeves. Light glinted off the edge of one window, shimmering like a single speck of metal caught in a debris field.

 _It was a dream_. Reed tried to take his mind firmly in hand. _It didn't really happen._ But the ship that hung silently nearby, watching the stars or perhaps the Enterprise itself, lay heavily in his mind. Reed couldn't shake the feeling that he was waiting for disaster. _Yer such a pessimist, Loo-tenant,_ he imagined Tucker saying. Tucker would have a more realistic view on the dream.

But then, Tucker hadn't seen the Captain dying under a metal strut on the bridge. Tucker hadn't seen the ship explode into a million tiny, irreparable fragments. Bodies.

But it _had_ been a dream.

Restlessly, Reed got up and retrieved a cup of hot black tea from one of the drink dispensers and sat sipping it and staring unseeingly out into the foggy yellow light.

* * *

The alarm caught Reed unawares and sent him staggering to his feet out of a sleep he hadn't known he'd succumbed to. His half-empty cup of tea flopped off the table, knocked by one flailing hand, and cascaded to the floor in a warm shower. Reed barely noticed.

 _"Tactical alert!"_ The Captain's voice sounded over the comm unit. _"All senior officers to the –_ "

Reed clutched the bolted-down table as the ship trembled under an impact. Icy-hot dread stabbed him sickeningly in the gut. He dashed for the comm unit, only to be hurled against the wall as the ship shook again under another barrage. At the far end of the room, something crashed heavily to the floor in a shower of sparks.

 _"Tactical alert,"_ the comm screeched, weakly. _"Senior officers –_ "

Reed pulled himself up on the bulkhead and punched the comm button wildly. "Sir, get off the bridge!" he screamed into the communications system. "Get off the bridge!"

The lights died. Reed could feel the ship powering down around him. He struggled to think clearly. He had no flashlight, not this time. He dug in his front pocket for his communicator, clinging to the wall against the ship's continued shudders. The pocket was empty.

A terrific burst of weapon-fire flashed at the windows; momentarily, Reed thought that the windows had been destroyed. Electric-blue flecks of light burst from the comm panel, sending him stumbling backward. The next jerk caught him off guard, and Reed fell, striking his head heavily against a table. Orange fire burst to life somewhere in the room. Broken pieces of metal and plastic scattered across the floor. Chairs tumbled.

 _"- to senior staff. Do you read? Repeat, Tucker to senior staff, do you read?"_

Meters away, the communicator squawked in the darkness. It must have fallen out of his pocket while he was asleep or when he woke up. Aware of precious seconds wasting, Reed felt for it on the floor. He couldn't find it.

"Say something, Trip!" he shouted helplessly, although he knew that speaking would make no difference until he could open his end of the comm channel.

 _"Senior staff, do you read me? Is anyone there?"_

Reed found the communicator by sound, just before Tucker stopped speaking. "Reed to Tucker!" He was shaking uncontrollably, words running together in his haste to get them out. "Trip, the Captain's hurt! We've got to evacuate –"

 _"What? Malcolm, where are you?"_

"E-deck. Listen to me, Trip, this happened before. The Captain's hurt, we've got to get to the bridge!"

There was perhaps half a second of the kind of silence that falls when one feels one is speaking with a person in a world entirely their own.

 _"Malcolm, are you hurt? There's a lot of damage on E-Deck, were you –"_

"I'm fine." Reed hurried to the door with maddened haste and examined the scorched control panel by the light of a flickering fire several metres away. "Trip, we've got to help the Captain."

The ship trembled again. _"Fuck!"_ Tucker swore. _"I don't know what yer talkin' about, Malcolm. I'm tryin' to git to Engineering. D'yew know where the Cap'n is? I can't get T'Pol or Hoshi either."_

Reed felt a sudden cold calm come over him. "I'm going to the bridge," he told the communicator. "Evacuate the ship, get everyone in the escape pods."

 _"What the –"_

" _Do it_ , Trip!" Reed cried. "If you don't they're all going to die!"

He closed the link on Tucker's alarmed confusion and pried the door open, scalding his fingers on the hot metal. On the other side of the door, fire licked both walls. Reed sprinted along the hall to the nearest access tube and scrambled upward. It seemed to take him an eternity to reach B-deck. When he emerged just down the hall from the access port leading up to the bridge, he did not bother to try the hatch – instinct told him it would be jammed – but opened fire on it until the entire thing melted away. A hot drop of liquid metal seared into his back as he tore recklessly up and into the bridge.

"Lieutenant Reed!"

Reed turned, knowing already what he would see: T'Pol, her broken leg trapped under a chunk of rubble.

"We've been attacked," she started hoarsely. "An unidentified ship –" Reed threw himself against the chunk of metal, lifting it up an inch or two and gritting his teeth against the burning pain of heat. T'Pol dragged her twisted leg from under it.

"Get to the hatch!" Reed shouted over the chaos of fire and damage. "I'll get Hoshi!"

He plunged into the inferno of the bridge, careless of flame and debris alike. He fought through to where Sato knelt by Mayweather, feeling for his pulse. She looked up, terrified but staunchly determined, as Reed emerged by her.

"Help me, we've got to get Travis –"

"I know, help me with –"

Mayweather was already stirring, his hands twitching. He blinked awake.

A burst of fire overhead reflected in the pilot's dark eyes. Sato screamed and Reed, acting on reflex, lunged for her, knocking them both out of the way as a huge chunk of flaming metal crashed down onto Mayweather.

"No!" Hoshi screamed. "Travis!" But it was too late. Reed pulled Sato, almost bodily, away from the young pilot's remains and up toward the emergency hatch.

"Help T'Pol," he shouted in her face. Without waiting for her to answer, he made a dash for the demolished tactical station.

Archer's dying eyes fixed vacantly on the ceiling of his beloved ship's bridge. Blood gushed sickeningly from his crushed ribcage, pinned to the floor by the massive support beam. Reed dropped beside him and lifted his Captain's head with gentle, bloody hands.

"Captain!"

Archer's eyes moved, and his clouding green gaze met Reed's frantic grey one. Reed could not hear his final words, but he saw them on his Captain's lips.

"My…crew…"

It was far too late to help. Smoke billowed up, making Reed choke and cough. He ran for the emergency hatch and slammed it shut. Seconds later, a dull explosion echoed from the bridge. The shrill wail of a hull breach alarm cut sharply through the smoke and devastation.

"The Captain's dead."

Sato looked up from where she crouched by the pale, half-conscious T'Pol. She didn't even seem to register his words.

"Malcolm, her leg's broken. We have to take her to Sickbay."

"No." Despair cleared Reed's mind. "We're evacuating."

"What? But T'Pol –"

"She'll die if we don't!" Reed said harshly. He jerked out his communicator, just as Tucker's voice issued from it.

 _"Tucker to Reed, come in."_

"The Captain's dead," Reed blurted, without preamble. "Have you evacuated the ship? You've got to get out –"

The ship groaned from the bottom of its belly under an impact that sent Sato sprawling into the bulkhead. Reed stumbled but kept his feet, and the screaming communicator.

"Trip!"

 _"Tucker to all hands, git out of here! We're losing containment, the core's goin'! Git out, git out! Evacuate –"_

Reed threw the communicator aside in impulsive, frustrated fury and hauled T'Pol upright. The Vulcan was only semi-conscious, and she sagged limply against him.

"Help me, Hoshi! We have to go!"

Sato stared. "How did you know –"

"Come _on!_ "

Something tore loose behind him. Reed saw Sato's eyes widen in a wordless warning that had no time to be spoken. A terrific clout hit him in the small of the back, throwing him forward. The worst of the blow, however, did not fall on him.

Dazed and throbbing, Reed lifted his leaden head. Obscured by the smoke, the broken metal hanging from the ceiling above where he'd been standing hunched like a hulking, demonic figure clinging upside-down with its claws.

T'Pol's corpse lay facedown on the deck, her limbs disarranged grotesquely in death. The back of her skull had been crushed by the blow. Green blood pooled around her.

Reed felt hands on his arms, half-lifting and half-dragging him with surprising strength. He couldn't hear Sato's voice over the ringing in his ears, but she pulled him forcefully along the corridor to the nearest escape pod. Sato clambered in, then turned and towed Reed over the threshold. The hatch squelched shut.

"No," Reed croaked, but his words were lost in the jolt of the pod pulling away from the Enterprise. "– no!"

He saw the blue light and felt the shock, but it seemed remote. Whether that was due to proximity or to his own dizzy, barely-conscious state, he did not know. Golden sparks glittered in the light of the twin suns, glittered with brilliance and beauty and death.

Distantly, he heard Sato speaking and others replying, their voices crackled and broken with static or grief or fear. He lay motionless, staring out the glass port at the magnificent shining thing that had been a ship.

Some time later, Sato came and sat beside him. She felt over his head and chest with small cold fingers until she had satisfied herself that he was not fatally injured, then held his bloody, burned hands while the debris field faded to a tiny bright spot and was lost in the splendour of the twin suns.

"Twelve left," Sato whispered, her voice sick with grief. "Only twelve. Malcolm, we're all that's left."

He might have wept, he might trembled against her and clung to all that was left with damaged hands, he might have asked _why?_ over and over without expecting or receiving an answer, or he might more likely have simply lain there and stared back at the damning glare of the stars. He did not know or care. His actions had sunk into a void of numbness and ceased to matter.


	3. Chapter 3

Disclaimer: Star Trek is still not mine, sadly. Thanks to Memory Alpha, Wikipedia, and other sources for providing scientific details and other research. I claim only the plot.

* * *

Reed jerked upright, dizzy and sick and disoriented. He was cold and achy, his hands and back throbbing with illusory pain. Pinpricks of nauseous light flickered in front of his vision like so many dead bodies. He pushed up off the deck and stumbled against his bed, crunching a toe on the corner. He clawed for a light switch on the bulkhead, and the ensuing brightness revealed a clean, orderly room. Except for a wrinkled spot where Reed's hand had fallen on it, the fleece blanket on the bed was smooth, folded in neat hospital corners.

2058 hours, the chronometer on the desk glared redly.

Reed stumbled across the room and barely made it into the bathroom in time to be violently sick in the lavatory. It was no good, this time, to tell himself he'd been dreaming. It didn't matter. Reed was not superstitious, but if this had been a dream then it had to be a warning.

When his stomach stopped heaving, Reed rinsed his pale face in cold water and peered at his dripping reflection in the mirror above the wash basin. Haunted grey eyes met his own out of the unfeeling glass.

"Am I going crazy?" he asked aloud, hoarsely. His reflection mouthed the words back but made no reply.

Shakily, Reed crossed the room and stood for a long moment by the comm panel. He ran his hand along the silky grey wall to feel its comforting solidity.

"Reed to Tucker."

The answer was a while in coming. Reed glanced across the room to where the chronometer stared back with dispassionate scarlet numbers: 2109.

 _"Y'oughtta be asleep, Loo-tenant."_ Tucker's voice growled drowsily over the comm. _"Like I was."_

A cold chill struck at Reed's spine.

"Never mind, Commander," he said softly. "I'm sorry I woke you."

He palmed the door open and was gone before he could hear Tucker's sleepy, _"Well, I'm awake now. What d'yew want?"_

Reed could feel his heart beating hard and slow in his chest as he rode the turbolift up to the bridge. He was coldly calm, the panic emptied along with his stomach. He was still afraid, desperately so; but it was not the fear that froze and paralyzed. This was dread. The dread, moreover, of an event that could possibly be averted. He could use this fear.

Crewman Alex looked up from the tactical station as Reed entered the bridge. Above him, a thick support beam lurked menacingly, hidden in plain sight.

"Malcolm?" Archer's puzzled voice pulled Reed's attention away from the bridge ceiling. "What are you doing here? You're not on duty until tomorrow."

Reed swallowed, conscious of the attention of the entire bridge crew on him. "May I have a word with you, sir? Privately?"

 _Hurry, hurry._ Archer rose, perplexed. "Of course."

Reed waited until the door of Archer's ready room had closed to speak. "Sir, we have to leave this star system. Immediately."

Archer stared at him, which gave Reed time to realise how utterly absurd he'd sounded. He tried to explain, but words failed him when he opened his mouth.

"Perhaps you'd better have a seat," Archer said at last, "and explain to me what you're talking about."

It was to his credit that Archer reacted with near-perfect equanimity. If their positions had been switched, Reed doubted that he would have maintained the same patient calm. Feeling suddenly uncertain, Reed sat across from Archer.

"Sir, we – we have to leave."

"Yes, you said." Archer regarded him dubiously. "Why is that?"

"We're going to be attacked," Reed told him. "The Enterprise will be destroyed if we stay here. We can't," he paused, confused, suddenly doubting himself. However, it was too late to go back even if he wanted to.

"Attacked?" Archer asked disbelievingly. "What are you talking about?"

 _Start at the beginning,_ Reed told himself. He took a deep breath.

"I know this sounds strange, sir." Archer shot him an expression that suggested _strange_ wasn't the word he'd been thinking of. Reed ploughed on. "In a few hours, an alien ship will enter this system. You'll hail it, but receive no answer. You will assume that it has come to study the Anachron cluster, like us. But it hasn't. It will attack us, causing –" he paused, memory supplying him with Tucker's voice, screamed over a communicator that as far as he knew was still safely in his pocket, unused since he'd returned from the away mission. " – causing a loss of warp core containment. The Enterprise will be destroyed."

Archer leaned back slowly in his chair, without breaking eye contact. There was a long, nervous silence. Reed moved first, fidgeting uneasily and looking away.

"Dare I ask you, Malcolm," the Captain said slowly, "how you know this?"

"I saw it happen, sir," Reed said in a low voice. "I don't know how, but…I saw it," he finished helplessly.

"You dreamed it?"

"No!" Desperate to be believed, Reed denied the suggestion vehemently. "No, sir. I wasn't dreaming it, I…" he looked down at his hands, pale and unmarked in his lap. He glanced up at Archer, painfully earnest. "Please, sir. I know this sounds strange, but…"

"You're serious, aren't you?" Archer's expression was fast changing from incredulity to concern. Reed swallowed hard and tried not to think of clouded green eyes slumping closed.

"Yes, sir."

Archer stood and paced slowly around the room. Feeling chastened despite the Captain's apparent genuine consideration, Reed sat and stared at the desk, waiting for Archer to deliver his verdict. It never came.

 _"Trip to Cap'n Archer."_

Archer moved to the comm panel, buying himself more time to think. "What is it, Trip?"

 _"It's…well, it's Malcolm, Cap'n. D'you know where he is? He ain't in his quarters."_ A short pause. _"I think there's somethin' wrong, Cap'n. He comm'd me a few minutes ago and sounded real strange."_

Reed felt more than saw Archer's glance and sensed that he had reached a decision.

"He's with me, Trip. I'm inclined to agree with you."

"Sir –!"

Archer held up a hand. "I'm sorry, Malcolm, but you've just been on a stressful away mission for two days and haven't got much sleep. I'm not willing to end our exploration here without something more tangible than what you've said. Trip," – addressed at the comm panel – "I'd like you to meet me and Malcolm in Sickbay."

 _"Yessir. Trip out."_

Reed stared numbly at Archer, feeling betrayed. "Captain…"

Archer touched him lightly on the shoulder with a pale smile. "Come on, Malcolm. Let's see what Phlox has to say, then we'll talk again."

Reed nodded hopeless assent. He could already see Phlox running a scanner over him and telling him that exhaustion could do funny things to the mind. With every fibre of his being, he hoped that Archer was right. He followed the Captain despondently out through the bridge and into the turbolift, barely noticing the curious gazes of the rest of the bridge crew, minus of course T'Pol. The Vulcan remained studiously absorbed in her station until Archer paused at the entrance to the turbolift and addressed her.

"You have the bridge, Sub-Commander."

"Yes sir."

Archer hesitated for a long moment, apparently indecisive.

"Is there something else, sir?" T'Pol queried politely.

"Uh – yes, actually. Comm me if you detect any sign of an unknown vessel in this system."

T'Pol's eyebrows flicked upward. "Yes sir."

Reed felt a flicker of hope as the turbolift sank. He dared to throw a glance Archer's way. "You…believe me, sir?"

Archer sighed. "Let's just see what Phlox says, alright?"

* * *

"Fascinating. How very intriguing."

"Doctor?" Archer probed with a hint of impatience. "Have you found something?"

Reed sat on the edge of a biobed in Sickbay, trying to avoid both the restless prick of adrenaline and the anxious glances Tucker kept throwing his way. He'd spent the last thirty minutes being poked and prodded by Phlox and being asked questions ranging from _are you still experiencing a headache?_ to _do you have a family history of psychiatric disorders?_ The answers to which were slightly and no, respectively. Had he ever experienced hallucinations? No. Had he recently had a seizure or unexplained loss of consciousness? No. Had he experienced nausea in the last six hours? Yes. Shakiness? Yes. Feelings of restlessness or nervousness? Yes. The questions had stopped after a while, giving Reed's weary but wired mind time to draw unpleasant conclusions about his own sanity. Finally, Phlox had taken blood and performed a chemical analysis, which had apparently turned up something, if his reaction was anything to go by.

"Indeed I have found something, Captain. Very unusual, I must say…very interesting."

"Are yew waitin' fer us t' ask 'Animal, vegetable, or mineral?'" Tucker queried testily. The doctor turned absently from his computer monitor.

"Ah, my apologies." He addressed the Captain. "It seems that Mr. Reed is suffering the effects of a hallucinogenic drug formed by the chemical interaction of two substances." He indicated the computer screen, enlarging the view to show a small cube-like structure about half the size of the blood cells visible on the monitor. "This is a molecule of Cyproheptadine, the antihistamine medication I administered to Lieutenant Reed before he left for the Zytexian ship three days ago. And this…" the monitor view shifted to focus on a cluster of tiny globes. "Is, I believe, residue from the fumes of the colognes that he and Mr. Tucker encountered on the Zytexian vessel. Combined, the two substances form a potent chemical whose effects are comparable to a moderate dosage of lysergic acid diethylamide, or LSD."

"So I've been hallucinating this?" Reed broke in.

"Almost certainly. You may also have experienced impairments in your perception of time and depth. Intrusive thoughts, confusion, and feelings of panic are also quite common."

"Can you treat him, Doctor?" Archer asked.

"I'm more inclined to allow this to wear off, Captain. The effects should subside within the next six to eight hours, and once it has dissipated there is minimal risk of any lingering effects. Nevertheless I would prefer to keep Lieutenant Reed in Sickbay until the drug has worn off, and I will work on synthesizing an antidote in case the substance does not disintegrate as expected." Archer nodded his approval.

"You're sure this was just a hallucination," Reed repeated, feeling an irrational need to be sure.

"Quite sure." Phlox offered him a broad Denobulan smile. "Drug-induced hallucinations do feel very real. I'm sure what you saw was quite unsettling, but it is perfectly consistent with the effects of this drug."

Reed closed his eyes and let out a breath he hadn't known he'd been holding. "Thank you, Doctor." He'd never meant the words more.

"Trust you to turn perfume into happy juice, Loo-tenant," Tucker said. Reed opened his eyes to see the engineer leaning against the end of the biobed and grinning broadly at him. Reed offered a wan smile in return.

"I wouldn't call it happy juice, Commander."

"S'ppose not." Tucker sobered. "A warp core breach, hm? You've got a vivid imagination."

"You don't say." Reed suppressed a shudder. "I'm sorry, Captain. I didn't mean to cause concern."

"It's not your fault, Malcolm," Archer reassured him. "Get some rest, sleep it off. I'm sure you'll feel more normal in the morning."

"Aye, sir." Reed watched Archer leave, feeling slightly dissatisfied by the Doctor's diagnosis. Hallucination or not, the destruction of the Enterprise had felt absurdly real.

Tucker patted him on the shoulder. "Don't worry, Loo-tenant, I'll keep a close eye on the core for you."

"No you won't, Commander," Phlox said reproachfully. "You'll get some rest too. I'd like you to stay in Sickbay also, in case the perfume begins to affect you as well."

"But you didn' give me that antihistamine," Tucker protested. "Surely it shouldn' affect me?"

"Nevertheless, Commander." Phlox beamed genially at him. "Consider it a precaution to be sure you take doctor's orders and sleep, hm?"

With a certain relief, Reed watched the engineer settle himself grumblingly on the next biobed. Despite the doctor's reassurance that his apparent visions had been drug-induced hallucinations, he couldn't help being reassured by Tucker's presence. _Just in case,_ he told himself, and followed that thought with _you really are delusional._ Disgusted with himself, Reed stretched out on the biobed and tucked his hands behind his head.

"Sleep well, Malcolm," Tucker mumbled, sounding half-asleep already.

* * *

Sickbay was dark and quiet when Reed woke, except for a faint, distant beeping and nearby muffled snores. His hands were cold and clammy. He sat up uneasily with the sensation of having woken from a vague and terrifying nightmare. From a small table beside his biobed, a chronometer glowed 2344 hours at him.

Reed sat very still, listening to the quiet normality of Sickbay around him. He couldn't hear Phlox anywhere nearby. Apprehension crawled under his skin like a parasite.

 _Hallucinations,_ he told himself. _Drug-induced hallucinations. The drug hasn't worn off yet._ All the same…

He slid off the bed and padded softly across Sickbay to the comm panel near the door. He couldn't comm the Captain; Archer would think he was still delusional and unpredictable. Even if there was a ship nearby, the Captain probably wouldn't tell him.

"Lieutenant Reed to Ensign Sato." Reed spoke softly to avoid attracting Phlox's attention if the doctor was nearby.

 _"Lieutenant? I didn't know you were awake."_

"Not for long, Hoshi. I just wanted to ask…" It would sound an odd question, but his peace of mind depended on it. "Have we detected any unidentified vessels in the last few minutes?"

There was a long pause. _"Just a moment, sir."_

"Lieutenant?" Phlox's voice made Reed jump. A light came on behind him. "What are you doing up?"

Reed looked guiltily over his shoulder. "Just…checking on something, Doctor. Give me a moment, please."

 _"Malcolm, you're supposed to be sleeping."_ It was Archer's voice. _Shit._ Reed rested his forehead against the bulkhead in exasperation. It felt cold against his skin.

"Sir, please. Is there a ship?"

"Lieutenant Reed, I must insist –"

"Is there a ship, Captain?"

 _"Another science vessel, Malcolm, that's all. It's nothing to worry about."_

Reed felt the blood drain out of his face. His voice sounded unfamiliar when he spoke again.

"Have they responded to hails?"

 _"We've scanned the vessel. It's unarmed. There's nothing to worry about, Malcolm."_

No. There had been no response. Reed fought a surge of panic. "Sir, we have to leave the system!"

"Please remain calm, Mr. Reed." Phlox advanced on him. Reed could see a hypospray half-hidden in the doctor's hand. He backed away.

 _"Listen to the Doctor, Malcolm. You need to rest."_

Phlox stopped at the comm unit as Reed moved away. "I'll take care of this, Captain, there's no reason for concern. Phlox out."

 _No reason for concern. Nothing to worry about._ Repeating platitudes didn't make them true. Reed backed up further and ran into a biobed as Phlox approached him again.

"Don't touch me, Doctor," Reed warned, his voice rising. "You've got to listen, I'm not making this up. The Enterprise is in danger."

"Mr. Reed, you are under the influence of a hallucinogenic drug," Phlox said firmly. "You are hallucinating. Please remain calm."

"No!" Reed was shaking. "No, I'm not hallucinating!" He circled the biobed without turning around, putting it between himself and the doctor. "You have to let me leave. Don't touch me!"

"Malcolm?" Reed whirled with his hands up, ready to defend himself. Tucker held up his own hands placatingly. "Whoa, Malcolm! What's goin' on?"

"The ship," Reed blurted. "We've found the ship. We're in danger, they're going to destroy the Enterprise. We have to get out of here."

"Doctor?" Tucker looked to Phlox.

"Lieutenant Reed appears to be hallucinating again," Phlox informed him serenely. "The Enterprise has detected an unarmed science vessel some distance away, but Mr. Reed believes it is a danger."

"It's not unarmed!" Reed exploded. He fixed his attention on Tucker. "You've got to listen, Trip. Please. It's not unarmed. We're all in danger!"

"Okay, Malcolm." Tucker became very serious. "What do we need to do?"

Reed thought quickly. The attack had been – would be – fast, lasting perhaps ten minutes from the first alarm to the destruction of the ship. The only hope was to leave the system before then, or to be off the ship when it came. Would they have time to leave? And if they tried, would they be followed? A ship with weapons sophisticated enough to destroy the Enterprise in ten minutes would certainly have engines powerful enough to overtake them unless the Enterprise had a significant head start. On the other hand, the alien ship hadn't touched a single escape pod after the last-minute evacuation.

"We need to evacuate. Get everyone to the escape pods or to the shuttles." He started to turn back toward the comm, but Tucker stepped forward, attracting his attention again.

"Evacuate? Malcolm, are yew sure? Isn't there any way t' protect the ship?"

"We can't risk it!" Reed protested. _Ten minutes,_ he thought. A vessel that could destroy the Enterprise in under ten minutes was not one they could risk fighting. Not when the lives of eighty-three people depended on it. "We can't let them die again."

Tucker looked past Reed and nodded minutely. Simultaneously, Reed felt the cold touch of a hypospray on his neck and heard the hiss as it discharged. Sickbay blurred. Tucker sprang forward and caught Reed as his knees buckled.

"Dammit," Reed whispered, trying to keep his eyes open. Tucker had tricked him. "Trip…"

"Take it easy, Malcolm. It's alright." Tucker pushed him gently back onto the biobed. "You're gonna be fine."

It wasn't himself that he was worried about, Reed thought. The world blackened around him.

* * *

Reed woke amidst chaos. Someone was screaming – weakly, as if in terrible pain. A voice was speaking over the screaming. The world around him trembled and someone gasped "No!"

Reed tried to push himself up and fell forward, sprawling awkwardly off the bench at the back of the shuttlepod and onto the deck, slamming his head against the bulkhead so hard it almost stunned him. His mind, hazy with drugs, was sharpened by pain. He stared wildly around.

He was in Shuttlepod Two, lying at the back where he'd fallen off the bench. Less than a metre away, Phlox knelt by the body of a MACO who Reed identified as the source of the scream. Blood spurted between the doctor's fingers as he applied pressure to a gaping wound in the side of the man's chest. The MACO's arm had been torn half away, along with a large chunk of flesh from his side. Propping himself awkwardly up on one elbow, Reed was able to identify the face, grey with pain, as belonging to Corporal Ryan. On Ryan's other side, Crewman Cutler worked frantically to prepare a bandage.

"Bandage, Cutler, _now –_ "

Reed had never heard the doctor's voice so sharp. Cutler's shaking hands fumbled the thick wad of gauze to Phlox, who pressed it to the gaping wound and began strapping it into place. Ryan screamed again. At the front of the shuttle, Commander Kelby controlled the shuttle with one hand, working communications with the other.

"Shuttlepod Two to anyone, do you read me? Enterprise, come in. Escape pods, come in." But there was no Enterprise left to come in.

"Put him out, Cutler, hurry! Before he hurts himself!"

Reed turned back to Ryan's struggling, bleeding form in time to see Cutler put a hypospray to the MACO's arm. As the man went limp, Phlox looked up and his eyes met Reed's. In the doctor's gaze, Reed read shock, fear, and disbelief.

 _How did you know?_

Reed did not have to see out the rear viewport to know what hung behind the shuttlepod: a vast field of twinkling lights, each one a tiny piece of his dead ship reflecting gold.

"There's only one escape pod," Kelby said from the front of the shuttle. His voice was a dry sob. "Crewman Eddie and Ensign Sato…they're all that's left. Them and us."

"No," Reed choked. "No! Not again!"


	4. Chapter 4

Disclaimer: I don't own Star Trek. I wish I did. Unfortunately there's a difference. Again, scientific/medical details and certain details about the ST universe are thanks to Memory Alpha, Wikipedia, and other respective owners.

* * *

"NO!"

Reed shot up from the floor of his quarters, nauseous and disoriented. The room was silent and dark but for the dim red light of the chronometer: 2058 hours. Sickened and trembling, Reed felt along the bulkhead for a light switch until something moved under his fingers and the room lit up. He stared around the room with blurred eyes. The desk chair was pushed in neatly, the bed smooth and without wrinkles.

"No," Reed whispered again, pressing his head against the cold wall. "Oh hell, no. Please."

He brushed the tears out of his eyes with an unsteady hand and wove his way into the bathroom. A terrified grey gaze greeted him from the mirror.

 _Calm down._ Reed gripped the edge of the counter and forced himself to breathe slowly and methodically, counting to five with each breath. When he felt composed, he flipped on the tap and washed his face with cold water. The action was automatic, born out of a need for some remnant of normalcy. He inspected himself in the mirror again – wide, shadowed eyes and white skin and taut mouth.

"I'm going crazy," he said aloud, and was startled at how even his voice sounded.

There was only one thing to be done now. He was insane, it was certain. He felt sane, but that was part of the trickery. He was hallucinating. He was psychotic. He could be dangerous.

Phlox emerged from a pile of medical reports when Reed walked into Sickbay. His eyes shone cheerfully blue, unhaunted by horror and the desperation of a crewmember dying under his hands. His clothes were clean. There was no blood trickling down his wrists and shirt. Reed shivered.

"Ah, Mr. Reed. What can I do for you? Headache back already?"

Reed took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "I'm sorry to trouble you again, Doctor," he said, very calmly. "I believe I'm going insane."

* * *

Reed lay on a biobed, staring up at the grey ceiling of Sickbay and listening to the low murmur of a worried consultation between Phlox and the Captain. It had proved surprisingly difficult to persuade the doctor that he was serious. At first, the Denobulan had mistaken his declaration for some form of human practical joke. When at last he'd been convinced that this was no jest, however, he had consigned Reed to the imaging chamber for a full-body scan and then run him through a series of tests and questions that were eerily familiar. Headache? Yes, raging by now, despite the analgesic he'd received an hour ago. Only an hour? It had seemed far longer in many ways. Family history of psychiatric disorders? No. Hallucinations? He'd gotten irritable at that. _Yes, doctor, that's why I'm here_. Only afterward had he realised that he'd never actually told Phlox that, and had therefore no right to be annoyed. Somehow he'd assumed that the doctor would already know. Seizures? No. Nausea? Shakiness? Anxiety? Yes to all. He'd started pacing, prompting Phlox to give him a mild sedative that served only to dull his mind and senses and did nothing to ease the anxiety he felt.

Phlox and the Captain came around the curtain that shielded Reed's bed from the rest of Sickbay. Archer's expression was strained, but the Doctor seemed pleased. Reed sat up, feeling that to remain lying down in the Captain's presence was disrespectful, even under these unusual circumstances.

"How are you doing, Malcolm?" Archer asked.

"I'm alright, sir." Not exactly true, of course, except in the sense that he didn't feel physically ill at the moment.

"I have some good news, Mr. Reed," Phlox said. "There is an explanation for the symptoms you've been experiencing."

Reed felt a faint creeping along his spine. "Allow me, doctor." He clenched a hand around the hard biobed edge. "I've been affected by a hallucinogenic drug formed by a combination between the allergy medication you gave me and the perfume I was exposed to on the Zytexian ship."

The silence extended uncomfortably. "Doctor?" Archer asked at last.

"That…is exactly correct, Mr. Reed," Phlox admitted. "Would you care to explain how you know that?"

Reed laughed hollowly. "I saw it – hallucinated it, if you will." He slumped back down onto the bed to avoid meeting their eyes. "I – I'm insane, aren't I."

"Not necessarily," Phlox said in what was clearly meant to be a reassuring tone. "I admit, it is highly improbable for you to hallucinate information that specific and accurate, but it is not impossible."

"Can you treat him, Doctor?" Archer directed the question at the doctor, but it was Reed who answered.

"The drug will wear off by itself in six to eight hours, and in the meantime it shouldn't be dangerous." He rolled over and buried his head in the small biobed pillow. "Not dangerous, hah," he muttered into it. He could still feel the ship's final shudders around him, the heat of non-existent fires, the warmth of Archer's blood on his hands. Who could tell what he'd do under the influence of hallucinations so vividly real? This had to be more than a drug. Something was terribly amiss with his mind.

"I would tend to agree with Mr. Reed," Phlox said. "However, it seems to be affecting him with unusual severity. I will attempt to synthesise an antidote for this substance. In the meantime, I'd like for Commander Tucker to report to Sickbay, in case the perfume has any unexpected effects on him also."

"Very well, Doctor." Reed heard Archer move away. He waited until the Captain was gone to raise his head.

"I don't think it's the drug," Reed said miserably to Phlox. "There's something wrong with me."

"We'll discuss that after the drug has worn off," Phlox said. "Try not to worry, hm? Hallucinations can seem very real."

"Tell me about it," Reed muttered bad-temperedly. "But, Doctor, if it's not…"

"Then we will deal with it then," Phlox said firmly. "Rest, Lieutenant. I'll wake you when I've synthesised an antidote."

Drowsy from the sedative, Reed dozed, only to be woken some minutes later by the voice of Commander Tucker.

"Come on, Doc. Just a few minutes."

"Mr. Reed is asleep," Phlox said with strained patience. "You can speak with him tomorrow morning, Commander."

Reed sat up, rubbing his face with a clammy hand. "It's alright, Doctor," he called out softly. "I'm not sleeping."

"You should be," Phlox retorted exasperatedly from beyond the curtain. A moment later, Tucker pushed through it, looking worried.

"Yew alright, Malcolm?"

"I've been better," Reed said drily. Seeing Tucker here in Sickbay gave him mixed feelings. In a way, it was comforting to have a friend nearby. But on the other hand, the engineer's presence was distressingly familiar. Reed couldn't help a prick of irrational resentment at the thought of Tucker distracting his attention away from Phlox and his sedative, even though that had been merely a delusional dream.

Tucker sat on the edge of the biobed, oblivious to Reed's discomfort, and studied him openly. "What happened? Cap'n said y'thought yew were goin' mad."

"I've been hallucinating, apparently," Reed said awkwardly. "Did Phlox tell you about the drug?"

"Yeah. You feelin' okay, though?"

"I guess. Confused as hell, though. And…" Afraid. Hurt. Relieved. Anxious. Reed trailed off, shrugging, and avoided Tucker's eyes.

"Hey. Don't worry." Tucker put a hand on his arm. "Doc'll get you back t' normal in no time."

 _Git out of here,_ Reed's mind prompted him in Tucker's voice. _We're losing containment, the core's goin'!_ Reed shut his thoughts down firmly against the frightened voice in his mind. _It wasn't real_. But it had been real. Even if it had only been a hallucination, it had been real in his mind. He'd seen Archer die. He'd seen the Enterprise shattered in a million pieces.

"Malcolm." Tucker squeezed his arm gently to get his attention. "Yew okay?"

Reed was appalled to find a faint pricking sensation behind his eyes. What had his face showed in the last few unguarded seconds as his mind wandered? He pulled away from the hand on his arm and forced a determined smile. "Of course. I'm fine."

"Sure," Tucker said sceptically, but he didn't have time to press the issue.

"You've had your few minutes, Commander," Phlox called out. "If you don't mind…"

Tucker grimaced. "Gotta go. Doc wants to run some scans on me. Hang in there, Mal, you'll be alright."

* * *

"Anything yet?"

Archer's voice was lowered in consideration of his sleeping officers, but it woke Reed anyway.

"Nearly there, Captain," Phlox replied indulgently. "I've managed isolate the chemical bond responsible for the reaction between these two substances, and I'm currently synthesizing a compound to dissolve it. It will take a few hours to synthesize, but I'm sure Lieutenant Reed and Commander Tucker can use the sleep, hm?"

Reed turned over sleepily, relieved. In another thirty minutes this confusing muddle of a day would finally end. The faint glow of the chronometer caught his eye. 2344 hours.

 _"Ensign Sato to Captain Archer."_

"Go ahead, Ensign."

 _"Sir, we've detected a ship entering the system. They haven't responded to our hails, but our scans haven't detected any weapons."_

Reed's stomach dropped. _No. No!_ He didn't realise he'd spoken aloud until Phlox opened the curtain. He scrambled back away from the doctor until his back pressed against the wall at the head of the biobed. _No. This couldn't be happening._

"Please remain calm, Lieutenant." Phlox moved toward him. "Can you tell me what's wrong? Are you in pain?"

"That ship." Reed's voice cracked with fear. "I saw it. We've got to leave this star system. We're in danger."

Archer appeared behind the doctor's shoulder. "Malcolm? What's wrong?"

"It's happening again," Reed said despairingly. "This is what happened last time. That ship – it's not unarmed, sir. It's going to attack us." He was shaking. The Captain and Phlox exchanged glances.

"It's only a science vessel," Archer said. "It has no offensive capabilities, according to our scans. Hoshi just told me."

Reed laughed, a bit wildly. "Trust me, sir, it has offensive capabilities. Please, I'm not making this up. I've already seen this happen. I don't know why we can't detect their weapons, but they're dangerous."

"What's goin' on?" Tucker, his hair tousled with sleep, burst through the curtain. He stopped short at the sight of Reed huddled at the end of the biobed in a face-off against Archer and Phlox.

"We're about to be destroyed," Reed said in a voice of deadly calm. Tucker blinked, nonplussed.

"You are hallucinating, Lieutenant," Phlox insisted. Reed looked to Tucker and spoke to him only.

"I'm not, Trip. I'm not."

"Take it easy, Mal." Tucker moved forward slowly, as though afraid of spooking him.

"That ship," Reed pleaded. "It's going to destroy us."

"I think you'd better keep working on that antidote," Archer said in an undertone to Phlox. The doctor gave a low hum of agreement, but approached Reed.

"This will help you relax, Lieutenant." He was holding a hypospray. Alarmed, Reed jerked away and would have fallen off the biobed if not for Tucker's hand suddenly on his back.

"No, please don't. Please don't. I don't want to wake up after…" He was babbling. With a significant effort, Reed calmed himself. "Please don't sedate me, Doctor. I'm fine."

Phlox observed him with deep doubt. Surprisingly, it was Tucker who came to Reed's defence. "There's no need, Doc. I'll stay with him."

"Very well," Phlox agreed reluctantly. Archer looked from Tucker to Reed uncertainly.

"It's fine, Cap'n," Tucker said softly. "You can go. We've got things under control."

Archer nodded, satisfied. "I'll be on the bridge if you need anything. Let me know when you've got that antidote, Doctor."

Torn between desperation and hysteria, Reed buried his face in his hands. _He's going to die._ "It's happening again," he muttered miserably. He didn't dare to protest too hard; if the attack was to recur all over again, he wanted to be awake for it. Perhaps he'd be able to do something. He heard Phlox move away too. Tucker leaned against the wall beside him.

"Easy, Malcolm. Nothin's gonna happen."

 _Of course not._ Just like nothing had happened the last three times. "You weren't there. You didn't see…" Bodies, glittering in the suns. Somehow, every fleck of shining debris had become a body, a person who he had failed to save once and was now again failing to save.

"Shh." Tucker moved closer to him. The unfamiliar proximity was simultaneously startling and comforting. "Nothin' happened and nothin's gonna happen. It was a dream."

"That's what I thought," Reed mumbled confusedly. "Then it happened again. And again."

"What did? What did you see?"

"You don't want to know." Reed's bitter laugh twisted into a shudder.

"I'm serious. Talk t'me. Tell me what happ'nd. It might help."

Reed scrutinized him irresolutely. Anxious as he was, he was loathe to tell his story to an audience who wouldn't believe a word of it. But perhaps telling the wretched story would make it less real. Tucker gave an encouraging nod. Reed searched for a starting point for his nightmarish story. Where had it begun, though? Where had reality ended and his delusion taken over?

"When was the last time you saw me?"

Tucker raised his eyebrows at the unexpected question, but he answered nonetheless. "After our debriefin' with the Cap'n. You said yew were goin' t' stop by the armoury before goin' to bed."

Reed nodded. Yes, that was it. He clung to that as the one fixed point of reality. "Yes. I remember. I went back to my quarters. But then…"

"Then?" Tucker prompted.

"I thought I went to sleep," Reed said lamely. "I woke up later, and there was something in my quarters. Someone was there, I could have sworn…I heard it, felt it." He remembered the shadow flicking toward the bathroom. "Saw it, even. But when I searched, there was no one there. Then I woke up on the floor. The lights were off. I hadn't been in my bunk at all. I was still in my uniform, even."

"You'd fainted?" Tucker suggested. Reed shrugged helplessly.

"I don't know. I thought…but anyway, I figured I'd dreamed it. It was 2058 hours, I remember seeing the time. I fell asleep. A couple of hours later, I was woken by a tactical alert. We were being fired on and the power was out. You comm'd me over my personal communicator, said you couldn't contact anyone. I went to the bridge…" Fire danced in his mind. "It was almost destroyed. Sub-Commander T'Pol was injured, and Ensign Mayweather. Hoshi and I got Travis and the Sub-Commander off the bridge. The Captain…he didn't make it." Reed gulped, thinking of Archer's pained green eyes. _My crew, Malcolm._ "Travis and T'Pol went to Sickbay, while Hoshi and I tried to get to engineering. We were on D-deck when the ship got hit again. I heard you over the comm saying that we'd lost warp containment. You were trying to evacuate the ship. Hoshi and I made it to an escape pod, but the ship was destroyed. Only eleven people escaped. Then I woke up in my quarters, and it was 2058 hours again. Or it was still 2058. I don't know."

Tucker whistled softly. "Jeez. Some dream."

"Then it all happened again," Reed said miserably.

"What, th' same thing?"

"Nearly. I thought it was a dream but I comm'd the bridge and asked them to let me know if they detected a ship. A couple of hours later they woke me to say they had. I went to the bridge, but the Captain ordered me off until I'd rested. I went down to the mess hall for a drink, and I must have fallen asleep because the tactical alert woke me. Then it was the same thing, with a few differences. Travis died on the bridge. T'Pol was killed too, after we got off A-deck. A piece of debris hit her. Hit me, too." He strained to recall the hazy details of being dragged to an escape pod. "I was injured, I think. Hoshi got me and her to an escape pod. Twelve people survived that time. I woke up again in my quarters at 2058 hours."

"I don' blame you fer thinkin' yew were crazy. I'd probably have thought th' same thing."

"That wasn't all. I tried to tell the Captain we were in danger, but he didn't believe me. He took me to Sickbay and Phlox found that drug in my system. I thought I'd been hallucinating until the alien ship showed up on sensors again. I tried to get you or Phlox to listen to me but the Doctor sedated me. I woke up on a shuttlepod. The Enterprise had been destroyed. Again. Then I was back in my quarters." Reed blinked back frustration, glad for the concealing dimness of Sickbay. "So I came here."

"It wasn't real, Malcolm."

"I know that. But –" It had been real, so very real. "I saw it, Trip. You died, and the Captain. Travis. T'Pol. Everyone…"

"We're fine. Nothin's going to happen, I promise."

"I hope you're right." Tucker was wrong. He'd be dead in a few hours, if not earlier. Reed shivered and rubbed his forearms for warmth. "But this is just how it was before. The ship seems harmless and we can't detect any weapons, but then they attack us, and…"

"Not this time. I know it seemed real, but it was jus' a dream."

"Maybe. But it's happening again, Trip –" Reed broke off, shuddering. "I'm afraid," he confessed in a tortured whisper. "What if it all happens again, Trip? What if it keeps happening, and I can't stop it? What if –"

"Shh." Tucker wrapped an arm around his shoulders. "Shh. It's not gonna happen."

Surprised but grateful, Reed leaned into the warmth. "I guess not. But…"

"Stop. Hey, stop it." Tucker squeezed his shoulders firmly. "Stop what-iffin', Mal. It's not gonna help you."

Reed subsided into abject silence, unconvinced but satisfied for the moment to sit in silence, reassured by the human contact. Distantly, he could hear Phlox humming to himself as he worked.

The angry shriek of a tactical alert cut through the peaceful silence like a knife into Reed's stomach. _"Tactical alert!"_ the comm wailed. _"All senior officers to the –"_

The Enterprise vibrated under the torment of weapon fire. Reed jerked away from Tucker, crying out hoarsely with outrage at the destruction of his world.

"No! Not again!"

Tucker clutched the edge of the biobed under the next barrage. "Shit!"

 _"Tactical alert! Senior officers –"_

The dim lights of Sickbay went out. In the darkness, Reed felt Tucker moving away, guiding himself on the edge of the biobed. He scrambled to get hold of Tucker's arm.

"You can't go! You'll die!"

"I have to get to engineering, Malcolm! Just – stay here. I'll be back when this is over." He pulled away. Reed heard him stumbling for the door. The ship reeled again. Falling sparks reflected strobe-like on a collapsing bulkhead, and Phlox's animal cages tumbled around the room. The creatures trapped inside screeched and struggled in panic.

"No!" Reed hurled himself off the biobed. _Do something. Change something, don't let this happen again!_ "Phlox! Where are you?"

"Lieutenant?" Metal gears ground as Sickbay doors were dragged open. Tucker was gone. Reed groped his way by feel towards the doctor's voice.

"We've got to evacuate, Doctor. Come with me."

"I'm not going anywhere," Phlox protested. "There may be injuries. I'm needed here!"

Reed had no time to debate. The ship's convulsions were strong. They had scarce minutes left before the death of the Enterprise. His hand encountered the fabric of Phlox's sleeve. "Doctor –?" The Denobulan's hand found his arm.

"Don't try to stand, Lieutenant. You could be inju –"

With his free arm, Reed swung at the sound of Phlox's voice. His fist collided solidly with flesh. Phlox slumped to the floor, unconscious. With difficulty, Reed oriented himself with his back to the open door and felt for the doctor's arms. He dragged him out of Sickbay and along the corridor in what he hoped was the direction of the nearest escape pod.

The emergency lights flickered dimly into existence as backup power flared to light. Reed blinked and squinted in the sudden, comparative brightness. Someone came running up from behind him.

"Sir?"

Reed whirled, recognizing Crewman Jenkins. "The doctor's been injured!" he shouted over the reverberation of energy weapons against the ship's hull. "Help me get him to an escape pod!"

Jenkins hesitated. "But sir –"

"That's an order!"

As Jenkins bent towards Phlox, the Enterprise quaked violently. Reed was thrown off his feet and slammed headfirst into the wall, where he lay momentarily stunned.

 _"Tucker to all hands, git out of here!"_ Jenkins' communicator screamed with Tucker's voice. _"We're losing containment, the core's goin'! Git out, git out! Evacuate the ship!"_

Dizzy from the blow, Reed staggered to his feet and helped Jenkins pull the doctor's limp form to the escape pod hatch, where he urged Jenkins in first and hauled the doctor in behind him.

"Go!" he yelled to Jenkins. "Get us out of here!"

The Enterprise leapt away from them with a jerk. Reed pressed his hands against the glass port and stared helplessly out at his ship as she shattered in a blast of blue-white flame and energy. The escape pod bucked with the force of the shockwave.

 _"Shuttlepod Two to escape pods, this is Commander Kelby. Come in, escape pods."_

Reed did not even turn. Through the port, he watched the captivating beauty of the splintered ship, shining like a distant swarm of fireflies or stars in the wake of destruction.

 _"Escape Pod C to anyone, this is Ensign Sato. I've got Ensign Hart with me. If you can hear me, come in."_

Reed did not hear the reports. Ten, twelve, twenty; it did not matter. He did not turn from the small glass port, not even when grief or distance blurred his vision and the debris field faded into a bright, faraway haze.


	5. Chapter 5

Disclaimer: I don't own Star Trek. Neither do I own the symptoms of psychosis. In other words: thank you, Google, for being a fount of medical information.

* * *

Reed lay in darkness, feeling the faint hum of the ship around him. He felt no disorientation now, nor did he grasp for explanations of drugs or dreams or insanity. He could not be certain that what he was experiencing was real, but he had to assume that it was: somehow, he'd been given more than one chance to right a situation gone horribly wrong. If this pattern were to repeat, then each time could be the final time that cemented events into a single course. He had to assume that this was the last chance he'd have to protect his ship. He could not afford the consequences of being mistaken. There was not a second to waste.

Reed stood purposefully, then promptly stumbled to the bathroom to be sick. His head throbbed almost unbearably. This wouldn't do; he couldn't convince the Captain of the legitimacy of a vague threat if he showed up on the bridge looking like death warmed over. He rubbed cold water on his face when the nausea faded and swallowed several capsules of over-the-counter painkiller. That would have to do.

But Archer wouldn't believe him. He already hadn't. Granted, this time around Tucker wouldn't be calling to confirm the Captain's already-aroused suspicions that Reed was losing it. However, Reed strongly suspected that Archer would still be sceptical of his claims. It was unlikely that he would abandon the ongoing exploration of a fascinating binary system due to sketchy claims by a fatigued and possibly drugged Armoury Officer asserting that an apparently unarmed ship, which had not even showed up on scanners, was going to destroy the Enterprise. Put like that, Reed thought, he wouldn't believe himself. No, he would have to be careful about this.

The thought of misleading his Captain was galling, though. And what could he say that wouldn't be instantly recognizable as a lie? He couldn't claim that the Zytexians had warned of enemy ships; had this been the case, he would certainly have reported it to Archer already, and the Captain would know that. He couldn't warn of malfunctioning targeting scanners, because Archer wouldn't think they were needed for a science mission. Besides, equipment failures would be as dangerous anywhere else as here. Reed couldn't think of anything that sounded remotely plausible – probably because there was no credible-sounding reason for his request. He'd just have to be as convincing as possible.

The only term he could fit to what he'd seen was _time loop_. Unfortunately, temporal mechanics was a hazy subject at best, even to those select few who believed time travel of any sort was possible. Reed was not sure he even considered himself among those select few. However, the Captain…Archer was a different story. Archer was open to ideas that others considered improbable, even absurd. It was one of the traits that made him a good explorer, even if it opened him and his crew to more risks than Reed considered prudent. There might just be a chance that Reed could convince him that a temporal anomaly was affecting the ship.

Maybe, Reed thought with a touch of irony, it was even true. That wasn't a comforting idea. Reed knew nothing about temporal mechanics; for all he knew, a time loop could end after any random number of cycles. If it did, and he hadn't saved the Enterprise…he shuddered. He had to assume that he had only one chance.

"Malcolm? What are you doing here? You're not on duty until tomorrow." Archer's words greeted Reed with disturbing familiarity as he entered the bridge. Reed spared no time for glancing around at crewmates who would be dead in a few hours.

 _No. They wouldn't be. Not this time._

"May I have a word in private, sir?"

"What's this about, Malcolm?" Archer asked as soon as they'd entered his briefing room. He was frowning slightly. "I thought you'd be getting some rest."

"This is urgent," Reed said firmly. "Sir, I need you to hear me out. What I have to say may sound…implausible."

Archer's eyebrows rose steadily. "Go on."

"Sir, I believe the Enterprise has encountered – for lack of a better explanation – a temporal anomaly."

"I presume you have a reason for saying this?" Archer asked after a short pause.

"Sir, since leaving this room with Commander Tucker, I have experienced the same sequence of events four separate times. At first I believed I was dreaming, but I am convinced that is not true." He took a deep breath. "In approximately three hours, long-range scanners will detect an unknown vessel entering this star system. It will not respond to hails; however, as sensors detect no weapons, you will assume that it is merely another exploratory science vessel. It is not. This ship will attack the Enterprise and cause critical damage, triggering a containment failure in the warp reactor. Less than a quarter of the crew will escape alive."

Archer stared uncertainly at Reed. He seemed to be deciding whether or not the other man was serious.

"You'll forgive me if I find this a little difficult to believe," he said at last. Reed smiled tightly and mirthlessly.

"That's not unexpected, Captain. I've already tried to tell you this once." He hadn't been nearly as calm then, or as coherent. This time would be different. "You took me straight to Sickbay last time."

"I won't say that's not on my mind."

"Sir, you've got to listen to me. This crew is in danger. We need to leave the Anachron system before the other ship arrives."

"In the interest of argument," Archer said slowly, "what did Phlox say? In this – alternate reality?"

Reed hesitated. Instinct told him to lie, but what good would that be? Probably Archer would take him to Sickbay no matter what he said. If he told the truth, he could at least prove some foreknowledge of events.

"I have been exposed to a hallucinogenic drug," he admitted reluctantly. "The doctor gave me an antihistamine medication before Commander Tucker and I left for the Zytexian ship. Apparently it combined with one of the perfumes on the ship to form a drug. But I'm not hallucinating this, sir."

Archer massaged the bridge of his nose gently with two fingers. Reed waited nervously for the verdict.

"We're going to Sickbay," the Captain said finally. He held up a hand to forestall protest. "I'm not saying I don't believe you, Malcolm, but I'd like to rule out…other possibilities."

"I understand, sir," Reed said resignedly. "But – please hurry. There's not much time."

"You have the bridge, T'Pol," Archer announced as he emerged from the ready room. "I have…" he glanced at Reed. "An errand to run. Comm me immediately if sensors pick up any ships entering this star system." He turned to Mayweather. "Prepare to break orbit, Ensign."

"Yes sir," Mayweather replied, bewildered but obedient. Reed followed Archer into the turbolift with intense relief. _Finally,_ he was being taken seriously.

* * *

Reed had never seen Phlox so astonished as when Archer marched into Sickbay with no other introduction than "Doctor, I need you to test Lieutenant Reed for hallucinogenic drugs."

"Take a blood test," Reed supplied helpfully. "You'll find that the antihistamine you gave me two days ago combined with a substance I encountered on the Zytexian ship to form a hallucinogen."

Phlox blinked blankly at them. "Captain?"

"Do it, Doctor."

Reed winced slightly at the sting of the hypospray that drew his blood. It seemed more painful than usual. He caught Phlox watching him with narrowed eyes and made an effort to better control his reaction.

The doctor studied the results of the blood test in uncharacteristic silence until Archer spoke up.

"Well, Doctor? Have you found something?"

Phlox straightened. "Indeed, Captain. May I speak with you" – he cast a glance Reed's way – "in private?"

Reed felt the leverage he'd gained with the Captain slipping away. If Phlox spoke with Archer alone, chances were he'd convince the Captain that Reed's warning was nothing more than a paranoid hallucination. "No!" Reed said, louder than he'd intended, causing both Archer and Phlox to stare. He lowered his voice with an effort. "Did you find what I thought?"

"I did indeed," Phlox said. "Captain, if you please…"

"Go ahead," Archer said, giving Reed a faint ray of hope. "You can speak in front of Lieutenant Reed."

Phlox looked disapproving, as if to say _if I must_. "Captain, Lieutenant Reed is under the influence of a powerful narcotic," he said bluntly. "He is also experiencing a number of physical symptoms associated with a psychotic episode – dilated pupils, hypersensitivity, high blood pressure, rapid heartbeat, and excessively elevated levels of stress hormones. He also seems extremely agitated, perhaps…" another flick of the eyes towards Reed "…paranoid. In his current condition, I doubt he is able to distinguish reality from hallucination."

"That's not true!" Reed insisted. "Captain, I didn't hallucinate this."

Archer gazed at him apprehensively. Phlox moved closer and spoke in an undertone to the Captain. Reed caught only flashes of what was said.

"…exacerbated by exhaustion…unstable condition…strongly urge you…"

He gripped the edge of the biobed furiously. He wouldn't let Phlox dissuade the Captain from listening to him.

"I'm not making this up!" he said loudly, drawing their attention. "Captain, if we don't leave this star system immediately the Enterprise will be destroyed within three hours."

Phlox's eyebrows rose so high they seemed to disconnect from his skin and actually slide up toward his hairline. Reed suppressed a recoil at the bizarre Denobulan facial expression. Archer rubbed the bridge of his nose again, wearily.

"There's an explanation," he said to Phlox, sounding unconvinced himself. "I think."

"Yes," the Denobulan replied patiently, "I'm afraid there's a very strong chemical explanation, hm?"

"How do you explain that I knew what the drug was?" Reed appealed to Archer.

"How did you know, if I may ask?" Phlox wondered, turning suddenly to Reed with an intrigued expression.

"I think I'm in a time loop," Reed repeated the claim he'd made to the Captain earlier. "You've already told me about it twice now."

Under the bright lights of Sickbay, surrounded by sterile instruments and with the proof of his own mental incompetence displayed on a computer monitor, the assertion sounded much more farfetched than it had in Archer's ready room. The Captain seemed to get this impression also. Phlox's eyebrows threatened to merge with his receded hairline.

"I think it would be best for Lieutenant Reed to remain in Sickbay until I am able to synthesise an antidote," he said to Archer. "Perhaps it would also be prudent for me to examine Mr. Tucker and keep him under observation for a few hours, in case the perfume has affected him somehow."

Archer sighed, frowned, and nodded. "I think that sounds wise, Doctor."

"Captain!" Reed pled, torn between anger and despair. "You've got to believe me, sir!"

"I'm sorry, Malcolm," Archer said. "The doctor's right. You'll feel better after he's treated you."

"There's no time! We're going to be destroyed!"

"No one's going to be destroyed, Lieutenant," Phlox said indulgently. "Why don't you lie back and rest while I work on an antidote, hm?"

"If it'll make you feel better, I'll ask T'Pol to scan for alien vessels," Archer offered, clearly trying to soothe Reed.

"We'll detect it at 2344 hours," Reed said hopelessly, "but it will be too late by then. Sir, we must leave!"

"I don't want to have to sedate you, Mr. Reed," Phlox told him firmly. Reed sank back onto the bed miserably, undecided as to whether he should make a break for Sickbay door.

 _Trip,_ he thought. Tucker would be here in a few minutes. Hope flickered with the memory of Tucker's willingness to listen the last time around. Granted, the engineer had helped sedate Reed the time before that, but still…perhaps Tucker could be persuaded this time around. It was the only chance he could see right now. He wouldn't have much luck trying to escape a combined force of Archer and Phlox, and even if he got out of Sickbay, where could he go? Within two minutes Archer would have the whole crew searching for a deranged and drugged Lieutenant Reed. Then he'd really have no chance. If he was awake and coherent, he could at least try to persuade Tucker to listen.

* * *

It was a while after Tucker arrived in Sickbay before Reed was afforded an opportunity to speak with him. He was acutely aware every second slipping past, but he could do nothing until Phlox had explained the situation to a confused and sleepy Tucker, run what seemed to be an endless plethora of scans and tests, consigned the engineer to another curtained biobed, and retreated into the small adjacent lab room of Sickbay. Even after this, Reed had to wait several minutes before Phlox became sufficiently absorbed in his task to stop glancing up every few seconds to be sure that neither of his patients was making an unauthorised exit. Reed suspected Phlox had locked the doors of Sickbay, but the doctor was taking no chances.

When Reed, peering through a crack in the curtain around his bed, had satisfied himself that Phlox would not notice, he stole softly across the room and ducked behind Tucker's curtain.

"Trip. _Trip._ "

Tucker was already half-asleep and grumpy. "Huh? Whassit?"

"Shh." Reed darted a nervous glance at the curtain. "Keep quiet. Phlox will hear."

Groggily, Tucker sat up. "What th'…Malcolm? Thought yew were sleepin'."

"No." Reed moved closer so he could speak softly and be heard. "Trip, you must listen to me. The Enterprise is in danger."

"How's that?"

"An alien ship is going to attack us," Reed whispered. "We're all in danger. You've got to help me."

"Cap'n said yew were hallucinatin', Malcolm. There's no ship."

"Yes," Reed said with quiet desperation, "there is. I don't know how, but I think I'm stuck in a time loop. I've seen it happen already. I know I'm not imagining this."

"Yer on some kinda drug," Tucker reminded patiently. "Yer probably not –"

"Dammit," Reed exploded in a furious whisper, "I need you to believe me, Trip. Please. I thought you of all people –"

"Hey, take it easy," Tucker soothed, putting a hand on his arm. "It's okay, Malcolm. Yer gonna be fine just as soon as th' Doc gets that cure for you. Stay calm, alright?"

Reed sagged against the edge of the bed, demoralised. He'd allowed himself to hope that Tucker would believe his story, but apparently he'd been overly optimistic.

"You think I'm hallucinating."

"Yew are, Malcolm. Doc said so."

"Well, it doesn't feel like that to me." Reed crouched by the bed, clasping the edge with both hands. He let his forehead fall against the metal with a quiet thump. What had he been thinking? Of course no one would believe him. How could he blame them?

"Hey, it's okay." Tucker sounded slightly alarmed. He touched Reed's shoulder gently. "Nothin's gonna happen."

"It already has," Reed mumbled.

"Shh. Nothin' happened, and nothin's gonna happen. It was a dream."

Reed felt sick. "That's exactly what you said last time," he confessed shakily. "Exactly. And then it happened again."

"What did? Tell me what happ'nd, it might help."

"No. I can't – not again." He couldn't relive the story again, just to have it wiped away once more. "I already tried. You didn't believe me then either."

Tucker slid off the bed and crouched beside Reed, turning him by the shoulders to force him to meet his eyes. "Lissen' t' me, Malcolm. Do yew trust me?"

"That's why I thought you'd believe me," Reed told him wretchedly.

"Well, I'm gonna ask yew t' believe me on somethin'. You are hallucinatin', Mal. It wasn' real. The ship's fine, nothin's gonna happen, I promise. Can yew believe me?"

Reed looked away. "No," he whispered.

Tucker leaned back slightly and sighed. "Lissen, Mal…"

"Trip, _please._ " Reed caught him suddenly by the front of the shirt. "It's true. I swear it." He could see the doubt in Tucker's face, and despaired. How could he ever convince Tucker to believe him?

Then the answer came to him: he couldn't. But perhaps he could do something about next time. _No. You can't assume there will be a next time. This might be the end, you have to save them this time._ But just in case…

He stared up into Tucker's worried face, suddenly resolute.

"Tell me something I couldn't possibly know. Then if, next time…"

Tucker was taken aback by his sudden switch in attitude as much as the odd request. "What?"

"Tell me," Reed repeated, warming to his idea, "something you've never told anyone before. Something that I couldn't possibly know about you, so if this does happen again I can prove I'm telling the truth."

"Yer bein' silly, Malcolm. Nothin's gonna happen."

"Humour me." Reed was almost begging. "Anything, as long as it's something I couldn't possibly know or find out anywhere else. Something that would make you believe I was telling the truth, if I were to know it." Tucker surveyed him with scepticism. He might have to act a bit, Reed decided resignedly. But Tucker shouldn't be too hard to fool; he could be gullible at the best of times. Reed drooped his head dejectedly and let a note of the anxiety he felt creep into his voice. "Please, Trip."

"Hey, don't…sure, I'll think of something." Tucker considered seriously. "Somethin' I've never told…I know. Second year, Starfleet Academy." He grinned bashfully. "I purposely flunked a leadership placement exam 'caus I wanted t' be put on th' engineering track."

"Really?" Reed was momentarily taken aback. He couldn't imagine purposely failing a test for any reason.

"Yeah. But don' go tellin' that t' anyone, mind. Don' want it getting' around."

"Who would I tell? Besides, if I'm as delirious as you think I probably won't remember in the morning."

"True." Tucker studied Reed thoughtfully. His eyes reflected the dim lights of Sickbay. "Y'know, yer not actin' that delirious. I'd almost think…" He shook his head, as if to dismiss the notion.

"That's because I'm not." Reed knew it was a useless plea.

"I'm not gonna argue with yew, Malcolm."

Reed nodded, resigned. He was becoming used to being let down, but that didn't make the experience more pleasant. "Okay."

"Okay?" Tucker sounded surprised, but pleased. "Yer good, then?"

Reed looked up into the trusting blue eyes. _You're going to die._ "Yes." He managed a wan smile. "I'm good."

"I should hope so, Lieutenant." Both Tucker and Reed froze at the sound of Phlox's voice just outside the curtain. "Now, how about you return to bed and actually sleep, hm?"

Tucker grinned guiltily. Reed couldn't bring himself to return the smile. "Guess we got caught out, Loo-tenant."

"Back to bed, Mr. Reed."

Momentarily, Reed considered wistfully how differently Phlox and Tucker would react if they knew he was speaking the truth. _Maybe next time_. But he couldn't let himself think like that; there might be no next time. Wishful thinking was of no use in any case. Reluctantly, he rose and padded back across Sickbay under Phlox's watchful Denobulan smile.

"Sorry, Doc," he heard Tucker murmur. "He was getting' upset about somethin'."

"The time loop. Yes, I've heard," Phlox replied in an undertone.

Too tired to even scowl, Reed climbed back onto the biobed and closed his eyes. He wouldn't sleep; he had to work out a plan. Good. That much was decided. He wouldn't sleep.

He dozed and woke abruptly. This wouldn't do. 2312, the chronometer read. Reed lay on his stomach and stared at the glowing red numbers until he'd made himself anxious enough to not fall asleep anytime soon. He had 32 minutes left.

He had to get to the bridge. That was key. If he could get there as the enemy ship attacked, perhaps he'd be able to save Archer. And then…he'd have to go from there. Archer was his Captain. It was Reed's job, first and foremost, to protect his Captain. The rest could come later. But how to get out of Sickbay – or rather, how to get out of Sickbay without alerting Phlox? He briefly considered trying to sedate the doctor or otherwise render him unconscious, but that would leave the Denobulan without even a fighting chance when the attack came. Besides, the problem was not physically escaping Phlox, but preventing him from raising the alarm. Sneaking out would be much better than resorting to force.

Reed rose softly and peeked out between the curtains. Phlox was bent once more over his work, but he was not so concentrated as to allow for an escape through the main door of Sickbay without notice. The door was probably locked at any rate, and though he didn't doubt his ability to disable the lock, it would take him at least ninety seconds to do so. Phlox would surely be onto him by then.

He rolled over onto his back and squinted up at the dull ceiling. Other exits, then. He had only one option for an exit after ruling out the main door. A single emergency access tube led from Sickbay. Reed closed his eyes, trying to recall the ship's schematics. That tube led as far up as B-deck, with exits on C- and D-deck as well. If he could get into the access tube without drawing the doctor's attention, he could make his way up to the port that opened onto the bridge. He'd wait in the tunnel until the tactical alert before entering. By that point, Archer would have more important things to worry about than a delusional officer on the bridge.

The most important thing would be timing. He had to be waiting in the access tube below the bridge shortly after 2344. Although he didn't know exactly what time the attack would come, he was quite certain it occurred within a quarter of an hour of the ship's detection. It would take him perhaps seven minutes to get to the A-deck hatch. However, he had to allow time to get into the Sickbay tube. Since he had to be completely soundless, that might take several minutes. On the other hand, he could count on Phlox to discover him gone within five minutes, and with internal sensors T'Pol would pinpoint his location in another three. After that, his capture would be imminent.

Reed considered the matter. The appearance of the alien ship might provide a distraction, but that would provide an extra two minutes at most. Leaving Sickbay at exactly 2344, Reed decided, would give him the greatest likelihood of getting to A-deck at the right time. It would mean cutting things close, but Reed was used to having a small margin for error. When one worked with torpedoes, one got used to being precise. He smiled grimly to himself and checked the chronometer again. 2320 hours. The seconds seemed to drag. He'd start a bit before 2344, just to give himself plenty of time to get the hatch open silently.

He thought about Tucker, lying asleep a few metres away. Tucker was going to die. Reed tested himself by thinking about it. He imagined Tucker helping an injured Crewman to an escape pod and turning back for another. He'd not make it to the escape pod himself. As long as there was anyone left in engineering – on the ship – Tucker would go back. Even for a lost cause. Reed smiled bitterly, because he felt like a lost cause himself. He wished he could save Tucker, though.

 _He'd want you to look after the Captain_ , Reed told himself firmly, and that was true; so he left the train of thought at that. He dug the heels of his hands into his eyes to keep himself awake and in a vain effort to ease his headache. Too bad he couldn't ask Phlox for an analgesic. If the doctor noticed he was still not sleeping, Reed would probably get something much stronger than a painkiller.

The minutes inched by but nonetheless 2340 came suddenly, taking him by surprise. Reed had been staring absently at the chronometer for almost ten seconds before he realised what time it was. He crept silently out from behind the curtain on the side opposite Phlox. Watching from around the edge, he waited until the doctor turned his back before stealing across Sickbay to the emergency hatch. Phlox couldn't see him there, but if the Denobulan came out of the lab room he'd be discovered instantly. Speed and silence were of the essence.

Slowly, Reed disengaged the first of three locks, cringing at the slight click it made. Numbers two and three were quieter, and with great difficulty he lifted the heavy hatch off without bumping it against the sides of the tube. Once inside, he contemplated the hatch. Replacing it would buy him an extra few seconds, but would expose him to making further noise. He left it off.

Getting to B-deck had never taken so long. Granted, he didn't usually travel by access tube, but the distance felt like miles. Reed made it to the hatch into the bridge just before 2350, by his best estimate. He could already hear voices inside the bridge, raised in concern, though it was impossible to make out what was being said. The ship, he guessed, had been detected.

From the other side of the bulkhead, a voice lilted upward in sudden alarm. Reed flicked the locks open and burst out onto the bridge in time to see an unmarked, blocky grey ship growing large on the view-screen. It occurred to Reed in the fraction of a second before he was noticed and before the ship fired that this was the first time he'd seen the alien vessel.

"Tactical alert!" Archer shouted into an open comm link. "All senior officers to the –"

The bridge exploded.

Reed was thrown forward into the nearest console and bloodied his face on it. From his sideways-sprawled position, he saw Mayweather collapse on the floor, felled by the explosion of his own console. The Captain hung grimly onto his chair, but Alex was not so lucky. He was hurled over his station by the blow and crashed headfirst to the deck, completely stunned.

"Tactical alert," Archer repeated urgently. "Senior officers –"

The ship bucked under renewed assault. A fire sprang into life near Sato's station, and to his left Reed hear the crash of falling debris. Archer jumped toward the tactical station.

"NO!"

Reed scrambled under the console in front of him and tackled the Captain, pulling him to the deck as the ship shook once more. Something red and fiery crashed down, partly on top of Crewman Alex. Archer swore at the top of his lungs and struggled, kicking savagely at Reed's head. Reed didn't think the Captain even knew who or what was dragging him back. In the darkness of the power outage, all that could be seen was the dancing light of electrical and debris fires on the bridge. Reed clung to Archer's leg with fierce determination, preventing him from reaching the tactical station that was a death trap.

Energy weapon fire struck the bridge with searing vengeance. The effect was like a grenade going off. When Reed could see through the smoke, he made out that two of the main support beams had fallen from the ceiling. One had impaled the tactical station, as before; the other protruded monstrously from the communications console and Sato's corpse. Reed had no time for thought or grief.

"Sir, we've got to get off the bridge!" he screamed. Archer was still struggling to get loose, though he'd been knocked around in the last barrage and was barely conscious.

Reed felt the ship quiver distantly, deeply, and he knew the final blow had been struck. _Surely not yet?_ He'd had more time before. Realization hit him like a blow to the chest: in saving Archer's life, he'd wasted the precious seconds the Captain would have had at the tactical station to return fire and delay the enemy ship. But it was too late to undo the damage now.

Reed staggered to his feet and began dragging the Captain through the smoke and fire toward the emergency hatch. Archer's attempts to pull free had weakened. He seemed overcome by smoke or by injury. Reed did not know which and it mattered little. He had only seconds to get off the ship, and they were still on the bridge.

They made it, but afterward Reed did not recall how. He did not remember pulling Archer through the access tube to B-deck, nor hauling him along the corridor, nor dragging him into an escape pod. He did not remember climbing over the Captain's prone form to get to the pod controls and blasting away from the Enterprise.

He did remember the shockwave of blue energy, the explosion of glittering fragments, and the burning light of the suns. He recalled hailing, over and over again, calling for any survivors, and getting no response. He remembered the exact moment when he understood that by preventing Archer from reaching the tactical station to return fire – by keeping the Captain alive – he had sentenced every other member of the crew to death. He crawled to the Captain's side and rolled him over. He was already feeling for the weak heartbeat in Archer's neck when he saw the chunk of metal gleaming red, half-embedded in the man's stomach. He saw the blood then, pooling unbearably around Archer's gut as the Captain gazed up at him with ghastly comprehension.

"My crew, Malcolm," he rasped hoarsely, and said no more.

"I tried to tell you, sir," Reed choked out. "I'm sorry, sir. I'm so sorry. It's my fault, they're all dead. It's just us. Hold on, sir, please." He continued to kneel by Archer, pleading, until long after the green eyes dulled with death. "Hang on, please hang on. Don't die. Not again."


	6. Chapter 6

Disclaimer: No, I did not suddenly acquire Star Trek between the time I posted Chapter 5 and now.

AN: According to Memory Alpha, the ST:ENT series bible gives Phlox's full name as "Phloxx-tunnai-oortann." So...that's not my invention either.

* * *

Reed woke gasping and nauseated. He could still feel Archer's blood running over his hands and spilling out onto the floor of the escape pod. The specks of light from the debris field had branded themselves into his vision. It was a while before he could be sure he wasn't seeing stars, and still longer before he could sway to his feet and dunk his hands and face under the tap. He did not check the mirror; he didn't want to see what he would find there.

Despite the sickening fear and pain he felt, his next course of action seemed clear. He had proof now that he hadn't been hallucinating. He'd go straight to Tucker and enlist his help. Between them they'd convince the Captain of the verity of their claim. And if that proved impossible…

It wouldn't, Reed promised himself. He felt like a liar.

But before that, he had to take a few minutes to calm down and pull himself together. It wouldn't do his persuasiveness any good if he showed up on Tucker's doorstep looking like a madman.

Reed sat at his desk and took up a stylus and padd with trembling hands. It was time he started jotting notes down. If he could figure out a pattern, perhaps he could work out how to change it.

He numbered one through five down the left side of the padd and began to write what he could remember from each separate course of events.

 _1: On bridge, killed: Archer, Alex. On bridge, escaped: T'Pol, Sato, Mayweather. Survivors: Sato, Hutchinson, Jenkins, Hart, Kelby, Ryan (?), Eddie, Fletcher, Fincke, plus two others; total 11. Pod + Shuttle 2 escaped. Core breach, Enterprise destroyed._

 _2: Notified on ship's arrival. In mess hall at time of attack. On bridge, killed: Archer, Alex, Mayweather. Escaped bridge: Sato, T'Pol. Survived: Sato and 11 others. Unknown pods escaped. Core breach, Ent. destroyed._

 _3: Spoke w/Captain. Went to Sickbay. Drug discovered, Tucker to Sickbay. Sedated by Phlox. Woke on Shutt. 2. Survived: Phlox, Kelby, Eddie, Sato, Cutler, Ryan (?). Core breach, Ent. destroyed._

 _4: Sickbay. Drug discovered, Tucker to Sickbay. Attack, Tucker leaves for engineering. Phlox to escape pod w/Jenkins. Killed or escaped bridge: unknown. Survived: Sato, Hart, Kelby, Phlox, Jenkins, unknown others. Shutt. 2, pods C and unknown others escaped. Core breach, Ent. destroyed._

 _5: Spoke w/Captain. Sickbay, drug discovered. Left Sickbay, went to bridge. Killed on bridge: Sato, T'Pol, Alex, Mayweather. Archer not at tact. station so Ent. does not return fire. Core breach. Escaped: Archer, died. Pod B escaped. Ent. destroyed._

Frustrated, Reed stared down at the scribbled words. There was a pattern; there had to be. He felt he was forgetting some vital piece of information that would reveal the pattern. He could already see a semblance of regularity in his notes; many of the survivor names and escaped pods were the same. However, others weren't – some lived, some didn't. Phlox, Sato, Jenkins…but surely there was a pattern somewhere.

Reed glanced at the chronometer and was startled to see that almost half an hour had passed since he'd woken. The time was 2125 hours. Looking at the chronometer reminded him of another factor of the equation.

 _2058,_ he wrote. _Wake in quarters. 2344, ship sighted. 2350-0010, Ent. destroyed. Exact time unknown but varies._

Reed tossed the stylus aside in aggravation. Even if he could recall every detail, how would that help him? It wouldn't guarantee the existence of a pattern, or his ability to find it and determine its significance. And even supposing he could, what then? If the Enterprise was caught in a temporal anomaly, recognizing and understanding patterns wouldn't do much in the way of solving the problem. He'd need something more tangible.

Hence the necessity of recruiting an engineer.

Reed rang Tucker's door chime impatiently and rapped a knuckle impatiently against the door, which slid open at last to reveal a dishevelled and barely-awake Tucker.

"What th' _hell_?"

"I need to talk to you, Trip. Right now. It's important."

"It couldn' wait another six hours?"

There wouldn't be another six hours for Tucker. "No. It cannot." Reed brushed past him into the room. "This is urgent."

Tucker studied at him uncertainly, as if he suspected some kind of joke. "O-kay…"

"I need you to listen, Trip. The Enterprise is in danger, and…I know this is going to sound farfetched, but I think we're caught in a temporal anomaly. In about three hours, another vessel will enter the Anachron system and attack us. If we don't leave now, this ship will be destroyed." He stopped as Tucker held up a hand.

"Wait. Wait. Jus'…give me a sec, Malcolm." Tucker rubbed his eyes and the bridge of his nose wearily, in a gesture eerily reminiscent of Archer the last time around. "Why don't yew explain what th' hell yer talkin' about."

Reed took a deep breath and explained. He told Tucker about the destruction of the Enterprise, about waking up in his quarters and watching the whole sequence play out again. He related his attempt to convince Archer to leave the star system, and the Captain's disbelief. He left out the drug. Casting doubt on his mental condition wouldn't help his case. "The Captain didn't believe me. He confined me to Sickbay." He told about being sedated and waking in the Shuttlepod; about waking again, back in his quarters, and thinking himself insane only to watch the sequence play out again. Finally, he told Tucker – wide-awake by now – about failing to persuade Archer once more, and the Enterprise's most recent demise. When he finished, there was a long silence.

"And yer sure yew didn't dream this," Tucker said dubiously.

" _Yes_ ," Reed insisted. "I'm sure, and I can prove it. Last time I asked you to tell me something I couldn't possibly know, so that if this happened again I could prove I was telling the truth."

"Yeah?" Tucker was still sceptical. "An' what'd I say?"

"In your second year at Starfleet Academy, you deliberately failed a leadership placement exam," Reed said with vindication, "because you wanted to be an engineer."

"How the hell d'yew know that?" Tucker was startled. "I never told anyone that."

"Exactly," Reed said impatiently. "It's something I couldn't know."

Tucker frowned uncertainly. "I don' know, Malcolm. This sounds pretty wild. Maybe we'd better go t' Sickbay, jus' t' be sure."

"I am not going back there," Reed said firmly. "You know I'm not making this up. How else could I have known about the test?"

At last, Tucker seemed to believe him. He paced across the room with sudden urgency. "Okay, fine. Say I buy it. What d'you want me t' do?"

"We need to convince Captain Archer to take the Enterprise out of this system," Reed said. "We have to be gone by the time the hostile ship arrives. At 2344," he added, as an afterthought. "Whatever it takes, we must be out of the system before then."

"Alright, Malcolm," Tucker said finally. "I'll help yew."

"Bring your phase pistol," Reed instructed. Physical force was a distasteful possibility he'd been contemplating as he spoke to Tucker. Initially the idea of mutiny had brought intense horror, but he was trained to do anything a mission called for. In this case, his mission was to protect his ship. If the only way to do that was to hold a gun to someone's head…morality, justification, and explanation would just have to be secondary to saving eighty-three lives.

"Yer gonna threaten the _Cap'n_?" Tucker asked, aghast.

"Not if I can avoid it," Reed said. "But we have to get out of here. Even if that means…" he left the thought unfinished. Tucker watched him with sudden wariness, but strapped on his phase pistol.

They must have been an odd sight, striding grimly through the ship. Tucker's uniform was tossed loosely over a t-shirt and boxers. At this late hour, however, there was no one to stare until they came onto the bridge.

"Captain, I need to speak with you in private." Reed did not wait for Archer to speak first.

"Malcolm? Trip? What are you doing here? You're not on duty until tomorrow."

"Please, sir. This is urgent."

The ready room felt different with Tucker at his shoulder in support. Reed poured out the briefest explanation he could give of the situation while relaying all the pertinent details. When he finished, it was a while before anyone spoke. Reed shifted uncomfortably, very conscious of the seconds slipping by. Finally, Archer looked to Tucker.

"What do you think, Trip?" The question _do you believe this_ was clearly written in his undertone. "Did you…see this, too?"

"No, Cap'n. But…" he hesitated awkwardly, and Reed felt his advantage slipping away. "He did know somethin' I'd never mentioned before. I don't know how else…" Tucker was clearly finding the reasoning less persuasive by the minute. "But it's not as if he was askin' yew to abandon th' ship, just to move outta the system for now," he added. "Maybe it would be better safe than sorry."

Archer frowned incredulously. "I'm not sure…you haven't gotten much sleep in the last few days, either of you, and you did just get back from an away mission. Maybe we'd better take you to Sickbay."

"I'm not imagining this," Reed said hotly, at the same time that Tucker said "That might be a good idea, Cap'n," in a relieved voice.

"Malcolm, I know we've seen strange things before," Archer said patiently, "but you have to admit this sounds improbable. I'd like to get Phlox's opinion before we act without anything more concrete than this. If Phlox checks you out and everything's normal, I'll consider leaving the system for now." His expression indicated that he thought the likelihood of Phlox finding everything normal was very slim.

"That sounds good, Cap'n," Tucker agreed. Reed felt cold. The moment of truth had come. Archer started for the door. The moment his back was turned Reed drew his phase pistol. Tucker gasped.

"That's not good enough, I'm afraid," Reed said calmly. "Please stop where you are, sir. I have my phase pistol on stun but I won't hesitate to use it on you or anyone who tries to stop me."

Archer froze, then turned slowly. His face was blank with shock, but there was astonishment and anger in his eyes.

"What do you think you're doing, Malcolm?"

"I'm trying to protect this ship, sir." Reed spoke levelly, though he felt revolted at the implications of his actions.

"This is mutiny, Lieutenant Reed. Put the phase pistol down now. That's an order."

He'd already crossed the line. It was too late to turn back. "No, sir. I need you to walk onto the bridge ahead of me. Move quickly and do not try to warn anyone. I will shoot you."

Archer's eyes burned with anger. "Trip," he gritted out, an appeal to reason.

"I think yew should do what he says, sir," Tucker said softly. His tone was unreadable. Archer glanced at him and seemed to recognise something he saw in the engineer's eyes. Slowly, he spun around and walked out to the bridge.

"Captain," T'Pol started, then stopped abruptly. Sensing something amiss in her sudden silence, the rest of the bridge crew glanced up. Sato gasped; Mayweather swore under his breath.

"Don't move, Alex," Reed snapped, seeing Crewman Alex shift in a subtle reach for his own weapon.

"Captain," T'Pol repeated, her voice deadly cool. "What is the meaning of this?"

No one answered the Vulcan. "Ensign, set a course out of this star system," Reed shot at Mayweather. "Maximum impulse."

"Sir?" Mayweather directed the question at Archer, puzzled and worried. T'Pol made a small movement, quickly aborted when Reed flicked the phase pistol's muzzle aggressively toward the Captain.

"Do it, Mayweather," Reed growled. Archer turned around carefully, keeping his hands up to indicate passivity.

"Don't do this, Lieutenant."

"Be quiet, sir," Reed said tightly. "Ensign," he prompted the pilot.

Archer glanced past Reed, at Tucker. Something in his face shifted. Relaxed.

"Sorry, Malcolm," Tucker muttered. Before Reed could react, there was a searing burst of heat against his back and the world blackened.

* * *

Reed woke under bright light to the sound of voices. His head throbbed hideously. The pain had lodged itself in the centre of his skull, behind his eyes. He was on his back on a biobed, his arms and legs oddly straight and stiff. Not until he tried, groggily, to sit up, did he realise he was tied. Thick leather straps held his wrists and ankles in place. He squinted his eyes shut against the light. Dark shadows moved against the red glare through his closed eyelids.

"Mr. Reed?" Phlox asked from nearby. "Can you hear me?"

Reed opened his eyes to see the face of a concerned but livid Captain Archer above him. Further away, Tucker peered down, worried and chastened.

"Dammit, Trip," Reed croaked. He desperately wanted to rub his hands into his aching eyes, but the leather straps held his arms securely in place.

"You are delusional, Lieutenant," the doctor informed him. "You are suffering the hallucinatory effects of a strong narcotic drug formed from the combination of a Zytexian perfume and the antihistamine medication in your bloodstream."

"No," Reed groaned. "No. Not again."

"You have a lot to answer for, Lieutenant," Archer said in a steely voice.

"Cap'n, he's drugged," Tucker protested.

"Lieutenant Reed is severely compromised," Phlox concurred. "I can't speak to the exact extent this drug influenced his actions, but given the wildly uncharacteristic behaviour he displayed I would say it is reasonable to assume that any indiscretions on his part are mainly, if not fully, the result of this hallucinogen."

"We'll see." Archer moved away. "Keep him restrained, Doctor, and I want an antidote as soon as possible. I have a lot to talk to Mr. Reed about."

"No," Reed muttered, gritting his teeth. He yanked hopelessly at the leather restraint, which sent a sharp twinge through his wrist. "Trip. You believe me, don't you? I'm telling the truth. Tell them, Trip."

"Sorry, Mal," Tucker said softly. "I gotta go with the Cap'n and the Doc on this. Yer hallucinatin'."

"I'm not." He yanked again, harder, feeling the edge of the leather band cutting into his skin. "I'm not. I'm not! We have to get out of here!"

"Commander," Phlox said sharply, "Please."

Tucker edged helplessly away as Phlox closed in with a hypospray.

"No!" Reed shouted, throwing his whole body into the effort of breaking free. "Let me go! Don't –!"

The last thing he saw was Tucker's anxious, conflicted expression. Then the hypospray touched his rigid arm and Sickbay dissolved around him.

* * *

 _Final log of Doctor Phloxx-tunnai-oortann, Chief Medical Officer of the starship Enterprise._

 _To any vessel that discovers this shuttlepod, please forward this message and its attachments to Starfleet Command in the Terran System._

 _The survivors of the Enterprise are on Shuttlepod Two, heading toward the Arteruis system at maximum impulse power. Unfortunately, the system is just over half of a light-year away, so it seems unlikely that oxygen supplies, or indeed our natural lifespans, will last long enough to reach habitation. However, we will attempt to conserve air to increase as much as possible the likelihood of our being rescued before we asphyxiate._

 _As the chances of rescue are somewhat remote, we have agreed that a final report should be made in the hopes that Starfleet will eventually discover the fate of the Enterprise, if any vessel encounters this shuttlepod after our deaths. By 'us', I mean myself, Commander Kelby, Lieutenant Reed, Ensign Sato, Corporal Ryan, Crewman Cutler, and Crewman Eddie. Ensign Sato and Crewman Eddie are not with us, per say, but their escape pod is travelling beside Shuttlepod Two._

 _The Enterprise is destroyed. The only survivors are those I have enumerated above; Captain Archer, Sub-Commander T'Pol, and seventy-four other officers and crewmen were killed in the destruction of the ship._

 _To start from the beginning: four hours ago, Lieutenant Reed was brought to Sickbay, unconscious after being stunned by Commander Tucker. He had attempted mutiny to force Captain Archer to take the Enterprise out of the Anachron star system, which we were studying. I relate Mr. Reed's story now, as I heard it from Captain Archer and Commander Tucker before their deaths in the destruction of our ship. Lieutenant Reed claims he was caught in a time loop and lived through the destruction of the Enterprise multiple times already, despite his efforts to change the course of events. He felt he had no choice other than mutiny to prevent the ship from being destroyed once more._

 _It should be noted that the Lieutenant was suffering the hallucinogenic effects of a narcotic caused by the inadvertent combination of two independently harmless substances; however, his story coincides almost exactly with the actual events that occurred. I am not a physicist and I claim no knowledge of temporal mechanics. Nevertheless, I cannot deny that Lieutenant Reed accurately predicted the events leading up to the Enterprise's demise, which I will now relate._

 _At 2344 hours, long-range sensors detected an unknown vessel entering the Anachron system. Scans indicated that it was unarmed, and though it did not respond to repeated hails, Captain Archer believed that it was a science vessel. However, some minutes later, it advanced on the Enterprise and opened fire without warning. Within ten minutes, the Enterprise received a critical blow to F-deck, causing a loss of warp reactor containment. The Enterprise was completely demolished by the explosion. Only Shuttlepod Two and Escape Pod B escaped the blast radius intact._

 _The origin of the enemy vessel is unknown. It appears to have left the system after destroying the Enterprise, and has made no attempt to follow or attack either of our two escape vessels._

 _Enclosed with this report are the personal letters of Ensign Sato, Commander Kelby, Crewman Cutler, Crewman Eddie, and myself to our families. Please forward them to the appropriate parties. Corporal Ryan is in critical condition and unconscious, but I am certain he would send his affections if he could. Lieutenant Reed has expressed no desire to write anything to his family. He was unconscious in Sickbay during the attack. I brought him onto Shuttlepod Two when the ship was evacuated, but he has refused to speak since waking up on the shuttlepod an hour ago, except to repeat "It's all going to happen again," several times. I can only assume that he still believes he is in a temporal anomaly. It is also likely that he is still under the influence of the hallucinogenic drug._

 _Also enclosed with this report are the sensor records recorded by Shuttlepod Two previous to, during, and after the destruction of the Enterprise. Unfortunately these records hold very little useful information on the unidentified attacker; nevertheless, they are the only recording we have of the events described above._

 _Although I am not often given to human sentiment, I am afraid that all my companions and I can do now is to hope that we will be rescued before we die of oxygen deprivation. If this is not the case, however, I trust that this recording and its attachments will provide a final record of the fate of the USS Enterprise NX-01 and her crew._

 _End Medical Officer's log._


	7. Chapter 7

Disclaimer: Nope. I'm still just a random person playing in Star Trek's sandbox.

* * *

So Tucker couldn't be counted on. Reed sat at his desk in the darkness and buried his face in his hands, exhausted and disappointed. He couldn't deny that Tucker's latest betrayal was a painful shock. He had wanted to trust Tucker. He'd needed an ally. But it seemed there was no one willing to believe his implausible story without concrete evidence. Unfortunately, concrete evidence was the one thing he didn't have. Every time the timeline reset, it erased anything that could have served as proof, and reverted the ship and her crew to exactly what they had been before. Nothing was left over – in fact, apart from their existence within Reed's memory, none of the events he'd experienced had even occurred. Not yet, anyway.

Absently, Reed turned on a light and began writing on a padd, recreating his notes about the loop from memory. Below the first five entries he added _6: Spoke w/Tucker. Spoke w/Captain, not believed. Attempted mutiny, shot by Tucker_. He winced at the wording, then steeled himself. He couldn't afford to get squeamish about what he'd done, especially not when he was about to try it again. _Sickbay. Drug discovered, sedated. Woke in Shutt. 2. Survived: Phlox, Sato, Eddie, Ryan, Kelby, Cutler. Core breach, Ent. destroyed._

"Hell," Reed said aloud, to the padd. "What am I doing? Mutiny? Really, Lieutenant?" He chuckled mirthlessly and thought of Ryan lying lifelessly on the deck of Shuttlepod Two, of Archer bleeding out under his own hands, of Tucker turning back into the blue blaze to save just one more crewman.

What choice was there?

He wouldn't allow himself to be caught off guard this time. He wouldn't wait for that.

T'Pol, with her finely-honed Vulcan speed and agility, would be the quickest to react, so he'd have to deal with her first. Next would be Alex, who was a member of the ship's security detail and had been trained by Reed himself. Reed would have a second, possibly, to stun them both. Sato did not carry weapons, so she'd be no physical threat. However, as the communications officer, she could quickly raise the alarm. The Captain would react quickly, but he was farther away from the door than T'Pol or Alex. And as for Mayweather…Reed needed him conscious. In a pinch, Reed could pilot the Enterprise himself, but not nearly as smoothly and quickly. Speed was all-important; besides, under Reed's inexperienced hand, the crew of the Enterprise would quickly realise something was wrong with their pilot.

Reed armed himself with his phase pistol, set on stun, a coil of thin, strong cord that fit under his uniform without too much of a bulge, and a sharp pocketknife. Every fibre in his body quivered with indignation at the ultimate insubordination he was about to commit, but there was no uncertainty in his mind as the turbolift rose toward the bridge. He positioned himself by the door, facing where T'Pol's station would be when he stepped onto the bridge. Adrenaline and nerves sharpened his tired senses.

The door opened. Reed sprang out, fired, and spun on his heel toward the tactical station as the bridge exploded into pandemonium. Sato screamed and someone shouted something – an order, perhaps – but Reed's attention was fixed only on Alex as he shot the man. Archer dived towards Reed but not at him, sheltering himself under the opposite side of the tactical console as Sato fell to the third shot.

"Don't move!" Reed snarled at Mayweather, who froze halfway out of his chair.

"What the hell!" Archer bellowed from the other side of the tactical console. "What the fuck are you doing!?"

Reed did not answer, instead using the cover of Archer's furious shout to slide along the console. He paused, waiting, listening, willing Archer to speak again and give away his exact position. He whipped around the edge, prepared to fire; but Archer, warned by a minute gesture from Mayweather, was faster. He grabbed Reed's wrists and wrestled for control of the pistol, knocking it out of line with his body. Reed's shot went wide.

Acutely aware of Mayweather's imminent presence in the fray, Reed recoiled backward and allowed Archer's lunge to carry him to the ground, effectively positioning the Captain between himself and the oncoming pilot. The collision with the deck almost stunned Reed, but he ignored the dull impact in his head and stabbed viciously up with a knee. In the momentary leeway the attack gave him, he twisted his hands upward against Archer's weakened restraint and fired into the other man's stomach. Archer slumped forward, then to the side as Reed shoved the body away with his feet and got the pistol up just in time to point it into Mayweather's face.

"Stop," he hissed, still on his back but powerful by virtue of the weapon. "Put your hands up and move backward slowly."

"What are you doing, Lieutenant?" Mayweather asked shakily, cautiously backing away. Reed kept the phase pistol trained on him as he rose. He ignored the question.

"Sit." Reed gestured to the pilot's chair. "Shut up. Don't move." He backed up and tracked around the bridge until he could fire upon the door without turning away from Mayweather. He switched the phase pistol setting to kill, ignoring the pilot's flinch, and fired upon the door until it was melted shut. For good measure, he also took out the turbolift control panel beside it.

 _"Commander Kelby to Captain Archer. What's going on, sir? We're hearing weapons fire."_

Swearing under his breath, Reed sprang over to the comm station to confirm his suspicion. Sure enough, Sato had managed to open a channel to engineering before she was stunned. He slammed his hand onto the switch to cut off the link and cursed mentally. Now the whole ship would be up and at arms in moments. He turned the phase pistol on Mayweather again.

"Set a course out of this star system and engage. Maximum impulse."

"Y-Yes, sir." Mayweather obeyed slowly. Reed walked over and crouched behind him.

"Be quick about it." He pulled the coil of cord from his shirt and cut it into lengths with the knife, clenching one end between his teeth to keep the rope taut. With some difficulty, he secured Mayweather's feet firmly to the base of the pilot's seat. With all potential threats on the bridge now accounted for, he tucked the pistol into his belt and set about tying the hands and feet of the unconscious bridge crew and dragging them to the emergency hatch.

"What's going on, sir?" Mayweather questioned in a low voice, afraid of provoking Reed.

"Keep quiet," Reed told him sharply. "Just do as I say and don't ask questions."

He knelt by the access tube hatch and examined it. He didn't want to melt it closed, as that would delay his exit from the bridge should his attempt fail. An escape route might be necessary. He wasn't willing to risk extending the time it would take to get himself and the rest of the bridge crew down to B-deck. Instead, he cut a few more lengths of cord and tied the locks tightly in the closed position. A few strokes of his pocketknife would have the locks freed, and anyone trying to get onto the bridge now would have to melt through one door or the other. Either way, Reed would have at least thirty seconds' warning.

Satisfied with his preventative measures, Reed took up his position at the tactical station and pulled up long-range scans and a course chart to watch Mayweather's progress. The scans were empty; no other ship was in sight. Reed let out a soft sigh of relief.

 _"Tucker to bridge, what's goin' on up there? Kelby tells me there was weapons fire. Bridge, come in. Captain Archer, come in."_

"Ignore it," Reed said tersely to Mayweather. Tucker continued to hail for several minutes, alternately trying to reach every member of the bridge crew. It must be confusing for Tucker to be woken by an alarmed Kelby to hear news of firing on the bridge and to find the ship suddenly in motion on an unknown course. Reed felt a hint of cynical smugness at the thought that this time, Tucker was getting the raw end of the situation. Last time he'd given it to Reed. Finally, Tucker stopped hailing and the comm went temporarily dead.

From inside the access tube, Reed heard movement. A red glow appeared at one edge of the hatch, accompanied by the sound of a phase pistol being fired. He hurried to the hatch and dealt it a few kicks until the sound stopped, then approached the comm. The game was up, but that didn't mean he'd lost.

"This is Lieutenant Reed to Commander Tucker," he said in the hardest voice he could muster. His head throbbed unbearably. "Call off the security you sent to the bridge. I have five hostages. They are all unharmed, but if you do not call off security I will kill them."

He was bluffing, but Tucker needn't know that. He'd probably assume that if Reed was mad enough to start a mutiny, he'd be mad enough to kill even his own Captain.

 _Why won't you believe me?_ Reed thought desperately. _I'm trying to save you all._

 _"Malcolm?"_ Tucker was incredulous. _"What's happenin' up there?"_ The sounds of security on the other side of the emergency hatch renewed.

"Call off security," Reed said with quiet wrath, "or I will kill Captain Archer." The mere idea filled him with horror, but he had always been a good bluffer. There was a sudden silence from Tucker. A few seconds later, the sound of phase pistol fire in the access tube ceased. Reed watched with satisfaction as the glowing red mark in the metal faded gradually back to grey.

 _"What d'yew think yer doin'?"_ Tucker's Southern accent was strong with disbelief. _"Malcolm, what're yew talkin' about? What's goin' on?"_

"If security starts trying to break in again, I will kill my hostages. Starting with Captain Archer," Reed said, and closed the comm link. He could feel Mayweather's horrified gaze on his back and swung towards him. "Stop staring," he snapped, "and pilot this ship."

"Lieutenant!" Mayweather protested weakly. Reed aimed the phase pistol at him. There was no need to speak the threat. He returned to his console and checked the sensors: nothing. The chronometer indicated 2138. He had two hours to get the ship out of the system before –

Enterprise heeled sideways with a shudder. Reed was on his feet and behind Mayweather in a flash, pressing the muzzle of the phase pistol to his neck.

"What did you do? I told you to –"

"I did exactly what you told me, Lieutenant," Mayweather gritted. Reed narrowly inspected the controls, which showed that the Enterprise should still be on the course he'd directed the pilot to set, rather than – as sensors showed – coming to a full stop.

"Explain, then," he barked. Mayweather worked the controls experimentally for a few seconds, then looked up with a grimly satisfied smile.

"I didn't do anything, _sir_ ," he announced smugly. "Commander Tucker's taken control from me."

 _"Stand down, Lieutenant Reed,"_ Tucker's voice came over the comm. _"I've transferred control of the Enterprise to engineering. Yer trapped, Lieutenant. Stand down, that's an order."_

Trapped. He was indeed. Reed stared around in panic, distracted for a crucial second. Mayweather, still tethered by the ankles to his chair, made a grab and got his arms around Reed's neck from behind, choking him. Instinctively, Reed twisted to turn the phase pistol on him.

 _No! It's on kill!_ He had no time to switch it to stun. Growling with frustration and struggling against the chokehold, Reed raised the pistol and brought the butt end of the grip down hard on the pilot's head. He couldn't get the leverage to strike hard enough. Mayweather lunged out of his seat and fell forward as the cords caught his feet. Reed heard him cry out in pain as his ankles twisted grotesquely, but the ensign did not let up. Black spots swam in Reed's vision. He was choking. Frantically, he tried to make space to strike Mayweather, but his movements were sluggish and powerless from lack of oxygen. The bridge of the Enterprise blurred and twisted around him. Then, unexpectedly, the pressure on his throat was gone. He was flipped over on his stomach. Strong hands gripped his wrists and hauled to his feet.

During the struggle between himself and Mayweather, security forces had at last broken onto the bridge. Reed was firmly pinioned by two MACOs, while one of his own men knelt to release Mayweather. Two others were untying Archer and the other bridge crew.

"No," Reed muttered, pulling feebly against the rock-hard restraint of the MACOs. "Let go! Get out of here, we're going to be destroyed!"

* * *

Reed sat on the hard single bunk in the brig and stared numbly at the colourless wall in front of him. He'd failed. Again. And in the process, he'd committed acts of the worst possible insubordination and treason, deserving of lifetime imprisonment. True, it had been in an effort to protect his ship, but that excuse was scarce balm to his distress. He'd shot his Captain and First Officer, a crewman on his own security team, and a junior officer. He'd threatened another junior officer with a weapon, and made death threats against his Captain and other crew members. He'd hijacked the ship and severely damaged the bridge. At best, he was simply a traitor; at worst, a terrorist and a traitor.

How could he have considered mutiny a viable solution? He knew the answer – he'd been desperate, and still was. But now that it was over, his actions seemed inexcusable. Guilt turned his stomach. Ultimately, he thought dully, the ends could justify the means only if the ends were achieved. And he'd failed yet again. The Enterprise would be destroyed. Archer would die. Tucker would die.

"Dammit!" Reed shouted and slammed his fist against the bulkhead. The ensuing pain was enough to take his breath away, and he hoped he hadn't broken a finger. That was the last thing he needed. "What am I supposed to do?" he asked aloud, softly. There was nothing he could do, though, not while trapped in the brig. He leaned back against the wall and closed his eyes, fighting both the mounting panic in his chest and the excruciating ache in his hand and head.

He was beginning to lose perspective, Reed thought hopelessly. Even now, when he should be using this valuable time to plan for next time – if there was a next time, he reminded himself angrily, he couldn't count on that – even now, the all-consuming dread that gnawed into his mind and prevented him from thinking clearly was due to the idea of facing Archer, when the Captain was revived and inevitably came to deal with his mutinous officer. Just imagining it made Reed's palms clammy. Archer would be livid, with good reason.

 _You can't assume this won't be the last time._ What if it was the last time? What if the Enterprise was destroyed and stayed destroyed this time because he'd failed? Almost as bad, what if it _wasn't_ destroyed? He'd spend the rest of his life in a Starfleet prison. Either way he was screwed.

He was so tired. Exhaustion pulsed sharply behind his eyes. It had been so long since he'd slept more than two or three hours. Technically, only slightly more than two days had passed since he'd left for the Zytexian ship; it felt more like a week. Reed's mind wandered off on a tangent, wondering if his physical body lived through each reset cumulatively or if it also reset each time. _Get it together, Reed_. But he couldn't concentrate. Sickening trepidation kept seeping into his mind and body, making his hands tremble and his thoughts wander. Or perhaps that was the headache. Reed felt the back of his head gingerly and was surprised to find a throbbing lump there. _Aha. Concussion, Lieutenant?_ No wonder he felt scatter-brained. Mayweather had thrown him to the deck so violently it was surprising he'd stayed conscious. He'd have to be careful. _Keep it together._ He had to stop talking to himself in his head. That wouldn't help his own confidence in his sanity.

"But you're the only one who believes me," he muttered sullenly to himself. Then, overcome by anxiety and nerves and a probable concussion, he began to giggle half-hysterically and had a hard time stopping.

"Something funny, Lieutenant?"

The icy voice of Captain Archer sobered him instantly. Reed sprang to his feet, startled to find that the door had opened without him noticing. Archer was flanked by two narrow-eyed MACOs. Just behind him stood Phlox, watching expressionlessly.

"I asked a question," Archer said wrathfully. "I fail to see anything funny."

"N-No sir."

"No what? There's nothing funny, or are you refusing to answer me?" Archer was toying with him, forcing him into a psychological corner.

"Nothing funny, sir."

"I tend to agree," Archer snarled with ill-concealed ire. He paced slowly back and forth across the cell, watching Reed like a stalking predator, daring him to speak first. Reed knew better.

"Explain!" Archer exploded in a detonation of fury and righteous anger. Reed gulped. How could he even try?

"The Enterprise will be destroyed if we don't leave this star system, sir," Reed attempted weakly. "There's a ship, an enemy ship. We're going to be attacked."

"And on what reliable evidence," Archer said with disgusted rage, "do you draw this interesting conclusion? And since when does it become standard defence protocol to hijack this ship!?"

Reed shrank backward in the face of the Captain's wrath, burning with shame and desperation. "Sir, I – there's something wrong. I think the Enterprise is in some kind of temporal anomaly. I've already seen the Enterprise destroyed, I know what's going to happen. I've tried to tell you, but…" he trailed off at the expression on Archer's face.

"That's your story?" Archer said in a voice of deepest disappointment. "You attempt mutiny and try to explain it with some kind of – bullshit about a temporal anomaly?" He paced away, moving restlessly to prevent himself from striking his officer.

"Sir," Reed started feebly, "I wouldn't…why else would I do this? You know I wouldn't…"

It was the final straw. Archer sprang at him and smashed Reed back against the wall, an arm pinning him by the throat. "I have no idea, Lieutenant," Archer snarled, right in his face. "But I intend to find out."

He gave Reed a final shove and stepped away, nodding tersely at Phlox. Reed stayed pressed abjectly against the wall, not daring to move both for fear of invoking further anger from the Captain and because he would probably fall if he gave up the bulkhead's support. Archer's push had knocked the back of his skull against the hard surface, and Reed's head hurt so badly that his legs felt weak.

The doctor scanned him from head to foot with a hand scanner, then examined the back of his head. The Denobulan's touch was gentle but brusque. He did not speak.

"You may want to take a blood sample, Doctor," Reed said meekly.

Phlox stared at him suspiciously, but took a blood sample. He still said nothing, which was eerie from the normally talkative Denobulan. Reed guessed he had been ordered not to speak to the prisoner. Archer, waiting impatiently just outside the cell, did not hear Reed's suggestion. He turned on Phlox when the doctor approached him.

"Well?"

"I have a few tests to run," Phlox said in a mild voice, though he sounded stressed. "However, I can tell you that Lieutenant Reed is suffering from a moderate concussion and serious bruising in his back and right hand. I understand your reluctance to admit him to Sickbay, but I would like to administer an analgesic and have someone remain with him until it is safe for him to sleep in a few hours."

"Is he in danger?" Archer asked brusquely.

"Medically speaking…" Phlox started hesitantly, but Archer cut him off.

"Is he in serious danger if he's not treated?"

"Not in serious danger, no," Phlox said indignantly, "but in pain, Captain."

"Leave him," Archer said dismissively.

"Captain!" Phlox protested. "It is unethical –"

"Doctor," Archer said furiously, "Right now, I don't give a damn about your professional ethics. This man injured four of my crew and attempted to hijack my ship. Quite frankly, I don't care if he's in pain. You have four injured crew members who you should be concentrating on, not –" he shot a baleful glance at Reed "– _this_ man. If you cannot overcome your objections, we have another cell currently available."

Something he'd said caught at Reed's mind. Four of Archer's crew? He'd stunned T'Pol, Sato, and Alex, but he hadn't hurt Mayweather. Unless Archer was including himself, which seemed unlikely, Reed was missing something.

"F-Four?"

Phlox and Archer both turned to regard him.

"Four," Archer repeated frigidly. "Ensign Mayweather suffered a broken ankle while…subduing you." He turned and swept away without a backward glance.

Reed's legs gave out and he slumped slowly to the floor. Phlox gave him a lingering glance before following the Captain. Reed barely heard the door slide closed and lock, leaving him completely alone.

His head was in agony and he hated himself for thinking first of that and not of Travis. He hadn't meant to hurt the pilot; he hadn't meant to hurt any of them.

He just wanted to save them.

Reed crossed his arms on his knees and lowered his aching head onto them. In the total isolation of the soundproofed cell, he sat and waited for the end to come.

* * *

After a while, Reed drifted into a hazy stupor despite his fear and the pain in his head. It was easier that way. He didn't have to think about anything, or try to find a way to fix this messed-up situation, or even pretend that he was actually getting meaningful rest. He could just sit in silence and shut his brain off.

"Yew look like shit."

Two Tuckers wandered foggily across Reed's vision when he opened his eyes. He had to blink and squint against the brightness of the cell before they resolved into a single person, who crossed the brig from the door and crouched in front of him. Tucker examined him critically.

"Yer hurt," he observed. "Did the Doc see t' yew yet?"

"Mm," Reed assented. He didn't want to move his head to nod, but opening his mouth also seemed like a bad idea. Tucker raised a hand and waved it slowly in front of Reed's face.

"How many fingers am I holdin' up?"

The hand swayed and danced dizzily. The number, Reed thought, could have been anywhere between six and twenty, though none of those options seemed terribly likely. He closed his eyes, nauseated.

"Concussion. That's what I thought," Tucker said, more to himself than to Reed. "Did th' Doc give yew anythin'? Painkiller?"

"I didn't want it," Reed ventured. His voice sounded feeble and distant. The lie was transparent.

"Yew mean th' Cap'n wouldn' let him treat you," Tucker said flatly. Reed did not answer. "Damn," Tucker swore. "What were y' thinkin', Malcolm? I sure hope yew've got an explanation. There is an explanation, isn't there?"

Tucker's hopeful trust was almost as bad as Archer's anger. There was an explanation, of course, but to Reed's befuddled mind it was beginning to sound an inadequate justification for the tremendous magnitude of his transgression. He nodded weakly, sending a jolt of pain through his forehead.

"Good," Tucker said, confused and hurt, "because I'd love t' hear it, Mal."

"You won't believe me," Reed told him dully. "I've already tried. You never believe me."

Tucker digested this in bewildered silence. "Yew haven't tried me."

"I don't need to." But that blue gaze, full of expectation, required an answer. Trying not to jar his head too much by speaking loudly, Reed recounted the most concise version of his story that he could produce in his condition. The account sounded rehearsed to his own ears, from narrating it so many times. "At first I thought I was dreaming," he finished despondently, "but it keeps happening. I've tried everything I can think of. I've told the Captain, I've told you, I've even gone to Phlox and told him I was going insane. No one ever believes me. So…"

"So yew tried to take over th' ship," Tucker said. He sighed and rubbed a hand across his face. "That's a pretty far-fetched story, y'know."

"I know," Reed admitted humbly. "But it's true." He looked pleadingly into Tucker's intense stare. "Do you believe me?"

Tucker sat back on his heels. "Lissen, Mal…" He sighed again. "I believe yew think yer tellin' th' truth," he said eventually. "But I'm not sure…"

In other words, Tucker didn't believe him. Reed withdrew further into the corner between the bunk and the bulkhead. Of course not. He closed his eyes against the light.

"I didn't mean to hurt Travis," he said softly. "No one was supposed to get hurt. I'm just trying to stop this."

"Sure." Tucker sounded deflated. "We'll…we'll figure this out." The unspoken _I hope_ could not have been clearer in his tone.

"What are you doing here?"

Tucker scrambled to his feet to face Archer, who glared down at him from the brig door.

"Get out, Commander. I'll deal with you later."

"Cap'n, he's hurt," Tucker declared simply, un-cowed by the Captain's anger. "Yew can't jus' leave him t' –"

"Commander Tucker, this man attempted to hijack my ship," Archer cut in. "I appreciate your assistance in stopping him, but don't think I will tolerate sympathy for inexcusable actions."

"I ain't sympathisin', Captain," Tucker protested. "But he's got a concussion at th' very least. I don' think he even knows what he's sayin'. Yew can't refuse him medical care."

"Don't, Trip," Reed pleaded faintly. "You'll only make this worse."

"It sounds to me like he knows precisely what he's saying," Archer growled.

"There's somethin' wrong with him, Cap'n," Tucker insisted.

"I will have to concur with Commander Tucker." Phlox appeared behind Archer and spoke gravely. "There is, indeed, 'something wrong' with Mr. Reed. He is currently under the influence of a powerful hallucinogenic drug. I suspect he may not even be aware of what he is doing or saying."

"He's taking drugs?" Archer demanded disbelievingly.

"I did not say that, Captain. The narcotic in Lieutenant Reed's bloodstream is the result of an unanticipated reaction between an antihistamine medication I gave him about three days ago, and one of the perfumes that he and Commander Tucker encountered on the Zytexian ship. I would compare the effects of this drug to those of lysergic acid diethylamide, or LSD. To cut a long story short, Captain, I would deem this drug to be the cause of the Lieutenant's bizarre behaviour. In my professional medical opinion, this man is not responsible for his actions while in his current state."

"Not responsible?" Archer repeated darkly, but there was a different undertone in his voice: one of relief. Reed realised belatedly that, furious as the Captain was, he wanted to believe that his officer's actions were somehow excusable or at least explainable. _He wants to believe in you. Even though you did nothing to earn his faith._

"I would recommend administering an analgesic and transferring Mr. Reed to Sickbay while I synthesise an antidote to this drug. Afterwards, and _only_ afterwards, Captain, should you speak with him about his…questionable actions."

Reed felt their eyes on him. "Very well," Archer said at last, sounding more grim than angry. "But keep him restrained, Doctor. That's an order."

Tucker let out a sigh of relief. Reed felt a hand on his arm, offering to help him up. "Come on," Tucker muttered. "I'll walk you t' Sickbay."

Reed didn't think moving was such a good idea. The lights bored through his closed eyelids and the voices of Phlox and Archer, though not particularly raised, seemed deafening. His head felt like someone was knocking on it with a sledgehammer, and the pain roused a corresponding sickened discomfort in his stomach. The walk to Sickbay was an impossible marathon.

"Come on, Malcolm." Tucker's hands were firm on his arms, pulling him upright. _Bad idea, Trip_.

A spike of agony skewered Reed's head and he clutched it with both hands, doubling over with the spasms in his stomach. He tried to throw up but his stomach wouldn't cooperate and instead he dry-heaved painfully. His legs gave way and someone must have caught him, because he was lowered to the floor a moment later. He heard voices, wordless sounds that clawed around inside his skull. He covered his ears against the sound. The pain was terrifying. He could scarcely breathe.

Then, blessedly, there was relief. Something cold touched his neck and the pain eased almost instantly, fading to a dull, bearable throb. Exhausted, Reed went limp. He didn't care if they carried him or if he walked; just as long as the pain didn't return.

In the end, he didn't know how he got to Sickbay. Tucker had been there, he thought; he remembered the familiar accent telling him _almost there, Loo-tenant_ , but that could have been his scrambled mind inventing things.

He was dimly aware, an hour later, of the ship shaking around him and coming apart in showers of sparks. He felt Phlox scrambling to loosen the leather bands that held him to a biobed and saw the inside of the ship as he was half-led, half-carried through the pandemonium of E-deck. He felt the firm support of the Shuttlepod 2's bench beneath him, heard Corporal Ryan's echoing screams, and saw the magnificent field of dancing fireflies like so many dead bodies or scraps of metal.


	8. Chapter 8

Disclaimer: I don't own Star Trek. I don't own tachyons. I don't even own Cherenkov radiation - which is a real phenomenon, by the way. Thanks to Google for providing me with the means to invent (hopefully) slightly-plausible science.

AN: By the way, for any spelling grinches like myself...I am using British English in this story. Hence sceptical rather than skeptical, defence instead of defense, colour/color, realise/realize, etc. Just in case the "spelling mistakes" bothered you.

* * *

Reed allowed himself two precious minutes to lie on his back on the deck and soak up the peace that he wouldn't feel for another three hours or so, not until he woke up here again.

Therein lay the crux of the matter: all of this might happen again, no matter what he tried. Unless he could find the key to breaking this infernal cycle, he would continue to watch the Enterprise and her crew die over and over for the rest of his life. _No, not for the rest of my life. Forever. Indefinitely._ The idea filled him with horror. He had to keep trying different things, changing the situation just a bit differently each time, until he found the central point around which the loop circled and figured out a way to break it.

But it would be so much easier to lie here in the dark and not care and let everything go to hell around him.

 _You have a duty to this ship,_ he reminded himself. _To your crew. To your Captain_. It seemed an unconvincing argument in the face of going through the same thing over and over again without hope and without a single person he could trust for help.

Reed hadn't joined Starfleet expecting it to be easy, and it hadn't been. But this was something beyond difficulty. This was wearing. He was growing numb with a kind of monotonous horror and grief brought on by watching the people he cared about most die time and again. He wasn't sure how long he could keep doing this. In truth, he wanted to give up.

It was that thought, and the anger that accompanied it, that got him up off the floor. Since when did quitting become an option? Lieutenant Malcolm Reed did not quit, regardless of the opposition. That was what made him good at what he did. Even if he lived through this a hundred times, he couldn't give up. That was not even a possibility.

He needed a new approach, though, that much was clear. Just the thought of his efforts the last time around gave him shudders. _It didn't happen,_ he reminded himself. Or rather, it hadn't yet and it wouldn't, which was not quite the same thing. In any case, mutiny was not a viable option. What he really needed was for someone to back him up. But Archer clearly wouldn't be convinced without solid proof, and trusting Tucker was too much of a risk. He'd gotten very close to persuading Tucker once, though; perhaps it would be worthwhile to try again if other measures failed.

Reed considered who else he might try to sway. Sato occurred to him, but he dismissed the thought. She was far from gullible and with no reason to believe him she'd go straight to Archer. But perhaps she was tied up in this too; she had survived every time except for once, possibly twice – he didn't know if she'd escaped the ship in the last iteration of the timeline. However, as far as Reed knew, she was the only person who had survived so many times. Maybe this loop was linked to the life or death of a specific person.

The irritating sensation that he was missing something returned. Reed brushed it away in frustration.

If Sato was an unpromising choice, then who else? Certainly not Phlox – Reed felt that particular route had been thoroughly explored and he was not eager to revisit it. At the best of times he was reluctant to visit Sickbay and he'd spent far too much time there in the last few days – or rather in the last few hours – the next few hours…oh, hell. At any rate, he'd had enough of tests and drugs and biobeds. And restraints. Reed rubbed his wrists with a grimace.

 _T'Pol._ The idea popped unbidden into his mind and gave him pause. It was an interesting thought. T'Pol was adamant that there was no such thing as time travel, but she was also a scientist. Not only a scientist – she was the Science Officer. She if anyone on this ship would know basic temporal mechanics theory, even if she thought it was rubbish. Perhaps there was some solid physical evidence to be found. If there was, then T'Pol, ironically, was the best bet to find it. All Reed would have to do was persuade the Vulcan to scan for…whatever it was he wanted to find. Just a scan…it shouldn't be too hard.

Reed knew better than that.

"Lieutenant Reed to Sub-Commander T'Pol."

 _"Go ahead, Lieutenant."_ No unnecessary pleasantries or idle chit-chat from a Vulcan.

"May I speak with you for a moment, Sub-Commander?"

 _"I am on duty."_ There was a hint of disapproval in her tone.

"It's not a personal matter. I'll come to the bridge," Reed added.

 _"Very well."_

Archer was standing at T'Pol's station, leaning over her shoulder to examine the display, when Reed got to the bridge. He glanced up as the door opened.

"What's this about, Malcolm? I thought you'd be sleeping by now."

His voice, mildly curious but unperturbed, clashed so violently with Reed's last recollection of the Captain's furious anger that he almost shuddered. Instead he suppressed the thought and joined Archer and T'Pol at the science station.

"Sir, I have…a rather odd request," he admitted. "I'd like for Sub-Commander T'Pol to run a scan for me, but I'm not exactly sure what to search for."

Archer and T'Pol exchanged a surprised glance. The Captain seemed to be smothering a enquiring grin as he turned to Reed.

"And what's the purpose of this scan, Lieutenant?"

Keenly aware of the subtle but inquisitive stares of the rest of the bridge crew, Reed kept his voice down. "Sir, I have reason to believe the Enterprise may have encountered a temporal anomaly. I know it sounds peculiar, sir," he went on, seeing dawning incredulity in Archer's face, "but all I'm asking for is a scan. Unfortunately, I don't know anything about temporal mechanics, so I don't know what I'd be looking for."

"On what evidence do you base your conclusion, Lieutenant?" T'Pol asked. Her expression suggested that, were she not Vulcan and therefore immune to such emotions, she would be experiencing a high degree of disbelief.

"I'd like to hear that too," Archer added sceptically. Reed resisted the desire to knock his forehead against the science station.

"It's a long story, sir," he said wearily. "I seem to be experiencing a sequence of events repeatedly. I know, sir," he said, holding up a hand to forestall interruptions, "that I've just got back from a long and tiring away mission. And I promise I'll go directly to Sickbay if our scans find nothing out of the ordinary. But please, sir, it would put my mind at ease if we could scan for any signs of a temporal anomaly."

Archer was now definitely suppressing a grin. No doubt he thought Reed was loopy from exhaustion. However, he turned to T'Pol, a hint of amusement creeping into his tone.

"What do you think, Sub-Commander? Sounds reasonable to me."

He was teasing her, Reed realised, about the fact that she didn't believe in time travel. The Captain was hoping for a chance to spice up a boring night and Reed had just given him an excellent opportunity. If a bit of unholy fun at a Vulcan's expense was Archer's reason for allowing the scans, however, that was fine with Reed. Just as long as he _did_ allow the scans.

"The Vulcan Science Directorate has determined that time travel is impossible," T'Pol objected in her stiffest tone, the voice that had always suggested to Reed _why must humans be so illogical?_

Archer grinned a little broader. "Oh, come on, T'Pol. I don't see any harm in it. Don't you know anything about the theory of temporal mechanics?"

"The Vulcan Science Directorate has studied the question of time travel in great detail," T'Pol informed him. "However, their research has proven that while temporal anomalies can alter the flow rate of time, they cannot cause –"

"Would you know what to scan for if you were looking for a temporal anomaly?" the Captain pressed.

"The Directorate believes that temporal anomalies are caused by random fluctuations in subspace and cannot be detected by ordinary sensors. However," T'Pol admitted with great reluctance, "there are some who believe that the presence of certain particles or radiations may indicate a temporal disruption."

"Please elaborate, Sub-Commander." Archer was enjoying himself far too much. Reed stood stiffly by, waiting impatiently for the Captain to finish having his fun.

"It has been suggested," T'Pol said unwillingly, "that quantum singularities may be used to create a temporal vortex. Additionally, elevated levels of tachyon particles may be related to temporal disturbances."

"Can we scan for these?"

"Captain, I must object. I am attempting to gather data on the Anachron stars…"

"I'd like to perform these scans, T'Pol," Archer said seriously, "if only to set Lieutenant Reed's mind at ease. I trust it won't interfere to much with your study of the stars?"

T'Pol seemed to think setting anyone's mind at ease was an entirely unsatisfactory reason for doing anything. "As you wish, sir." She narrated the process as her long fingers worked quickly. "It is not possible to scan directly for tachyons, as these particles have a negative mass. However, tachyons emit a form of radiation known as Cherenkov radiation, which is observable. It appears as a strong blue glow easily visible without sensor enhancements. Were tachyons present in this star system, we should be surrounded by such a glow. As we have observed no such phenomenon…"

"T'Pol?" Archer asked curiously, when the Vulcan paused mid-sentence.

"It is possible that sensors are malfunctioning, Captain," T'Pol said, rescanning. "I am receiving unusual readings."

Reed felt a sudden clench in his gut. He studied the display and saw a chart of the binary system. The map was a uniform dark navy-blue except for one location. About a square kilometre of space, some hundred and fifty thousand kilometres directly aft of the Enterprise, was coloured such a bright blue that it was almost neon.

"Sub-Commander?" Archer asked, all traces of amusement gone.

"What is it?"

"This is a map of Cherenkov radiation within subspace," T'Pol said cautiously. She checked a reading. "The area of light blue contains a level of Cherenkov radiation approximately three hundred and seventy-four percent higher than the amount considered normal background radiation. I would add, Captain, that such an anomaly as this may possibly be a natural effect of gravitational distortions caused by the Anachron stars."

"But it does seem unusual," Archer said gravely.

"Indeed. The levels of radiation here do appear to indicate the presence of tachyon particles. No other known phenomenon can produce this quantity of radiation."

"I certainly think it's something worth looking into," Archer said. He turned an impressed gaze on Reed. "How did you know about this?"

Reed felt weak with relief. Finally, he had tangible proof that he was telling the truth.

"Sir," T'Pol protested, "Tachyon particles are by no means proof of a temporal disturbance. The Vulcan Science Directorate –"

"We're explorers, T'Pol," Archer pointed out. "And we're not Vulcans. We humans are still naïve enough to be intrigued by the idea of time travel." He turned to Reed. "You said you'd experienced a certain event multiple times? Perhaps you'd better give us a little more detail. What event?"

"Aye, sir." Reed straightened and swallowed down his creeping fear. He took a deep breath before he answered. "The destruction of the Enterprise."

* * *

The faces around the bridge were confused but grim. Archer had dismissed Crewman Alex and called an emergency meeting of the senior staff immediately upon hearing Reed's warning. Tucker arrived in a rush, barely in uniform and dishevelled from sleep, well after Phlox, Sato, Mayweather, T'Pol, and Archer were gathered around the bridge.

Reed glanced at the chronometer and fidgeted uneasily. It was 2134 hours. _Two hours left_. Tucker caught his eye as he slipped into the room and offered a slight, puzzled grin. Reed looked away.

Archer rose from the Captain's chair as soon as Tucker entered. "I know most of you are wondering what I've called this meeting for, and I won't beat around the bush because we may not have much time. The Enterprise may be in danger from what we believe to be a temporal anomaly." He pulled up a map of the radiation T'Pol had detected on the main view-screen. "This chart shows an unusually high level of Cherenkov radiation within this star system. We believe this is caused by the build-up of tachyons within a subspace pocket Although it's not conclusive proof, tachyons have been associated with temporal singularities." T'Pol shifted at this bastardisation of her words, but kept quiet. "We also believe a hostile vessel may be preparing to attack the Enterprise. How these two things are related, or if they are, is unknown." Archer delegated the explanation. "I'm not the expert here. Lieutenant Reed, please explain what you told myself and T'Pol."

Reed's hands were damp with nerves as he stood up, though he couldn't pinpoint why. Although this time around he had the Captain's support, he still had an uneasy feeling that something was wrong. As briefly and completely as possible, he explained his story, mindful to avoid all mention of the drug he'd been exposed to. That could only hurt his case now.

He told the silent senior staff about waking up after the first destruction believing it was a dream, only to watch the same thing happen again. About being disbelieved, for obvious reasons; about doubting his own sanity, then realising that what he was seeing was not a figment of his imagination. He gave every detail he could remember about the hostile ship and the fate of the Enterprise, but skimmed over the particulars of the others' actions. The last thing he needed was to cause disgruntlement over deeds they hadn't technically done. He also avoided all mention of his attempted mutiny in the previous iteration. That would do him no favours, and wasn't necessary for them to know. When he'd finished, he faltered slightly, not sure where to go next. He deliberately avoided all of the eyes on him.

"We're currently on a course out of this system at maximum impulse," Archer said. "However, Mr. Mayweather tells me we won't be clear to go to warp for another hour and a half, which takes us to almost 2330 hours. As Lieutenant Reed said, the attack on the Enterprise occurred – or will occur, supposedly – at 2344. Although we've altered the timeline, obviously, I believe it is safe to assume that the hostile ship has warp technology and may track us. We'll remain on tactical alert until further notice." He allowed a moment of silence to elapse as the senior staff digested the flood of information. "I'd like to hear any thoughts," he added. "Anything that might be helpful to the defence of this ship or relevant in any way."

Unsurprisingly, Tucker was the first to put a hand up. He ventured the question that Reed had been waiting for and also dreading.

"Cap'n, this temporal anomaly…supposin' that's what it is…how's avoidin' this enemy ship gonna help us? If there is a temporal anomaly, won't we just end up right back where we started?"

Archer's face was grim. "For the moment, we're assuming that the temporal anomaly is related to either the enemy vessel or the destruction of the Enterprise. If we can escape the ship, then hopefully the timeline will resolve itself. And if it does not…then we will have to count on Lieutenant Reed to alert our past selves to the danger and attempt to work out a different solution, since he seems to be the only one immune to this anomaly."

Reed dropped his eyes, sickened by the thought of going through this again and again, facing their trust in him and then failing them. He was relieved that his story had finally been believed, but he wasn't getting his hopes up yet.

"It'll work this time," Sato said with transparent bravado. "But if it doesn't," she went on more quietly, "then I know Malcolm will figure out a way to stop this. Right, Lieutenant?"

"I second that," Tucker announced, and Archer smiled approvingly as Mayweather nodded.

They meant to be encouraging, but Reed could only manage a weak smile without meeting their eyes. Their faith only made him feel worse, because he knew he did not deserve it. He wondered what Archer would do if he knew that Reed had shot him the last time around.

"You all know where you're supposed to be," Archer said. "Tell your departments what's going on strictly on a need-to-know basis." He nodded at Sato. "Announce the tactical alert, Ensign."

"I'd like to stay on th' bridge, sir," Tucker said quietly to Archer. "I'll go down t' engineerin' at th' first peep of trouble or as th' time gets closer. But…" He moved closer and said something that Reed couldn't make out, though he did not miss the fleeting glance Archer cast his way. So they were talking about him. That was hardly a surprise. Reed busied himself over his station and pretended not to notice. As Phlox left the bridge, Tucker came over to stand by the tactical station.

"Yew alright?" he asked quietly. Reed sighed.

"I'm fine, Trip."

Tucker leaned in closer. "Malcolm, how many times…" he trailed off halfway through the question, but Reed couldn't pretend not to understand.

"Seven." He wished Tucker would stop scrutinizing at him with such concern. "Seven times."

"Damn." Tucker ran a hand agitatedly through his hair. "I don't know what t' say, Mal."

"I don't want to talk about it."

"I know," Tucker said quietly. "But lissen, Mal, when this is all over…"

Reed refused to look at him. It was fine for Tucker to say that, but it wasn't him who'd have to live through another reset, another round of watching his crew die and his ship explode. For all Tucker knew, there might not be an end to this.

"We're gonna get through it," Tucker said, as if sensing his thoughts. "And if it doesn't work, I know you'll come through fer us."

"Sure. Just like the last seven times," Reed muttered.

"No. Not like the last seven times, 'caus yew know what t' do now. Yew got us t' believe you this time."

It wasn't making them believe him that worried Reed anymore. It was himself. If he couldn't find a way to stop the time loop, it didn't matter whether or not he could convince the Captain. So much was riding on him, and at the moment Reed didn't trust his own instincts – not after his disastrous, failed mutiny.

"It's gonna work, Mal."

"You don't know that." Despite himself, bitterness crept into Reed's tone. "If it doesn't…"

"I know. It's gotta be frustratin' havin' t' go through this over an' over."

Frustrating wasn't the word Reed would have chosen. He glanced around to be sure no one else was listening before he answered.

"That's not what I was going to say." He stared at the tactical station intently. Oh hell, what did it matter? Chances were that within two hours this conversation would have been obliterated from the timeline. Besides, if by some miracle they did break out of the time loop, Reed would be too elated to care what he'd said to Tucker. "I…don't want to see it happen again."

"Oh." Tucker was taken aback. "I guess that must've been pretty rough."

"You died, Trip," Reed told him blankly. "You and everyone else."

Tucker put a hand on his wrist. "Hey. Look at me, Malcolm."

Reed raised his eyes reluctantly from the console. He didn't want to see the blue eyes radiating trust and confidence in him. Tucker was serious, however.

"It's not gonna happen again," Tucker said. "Trust me."

Reed smiled tightly. "Yeah. Sure." Tucker would be dead soon, along with Archer and T'Pol and the rest of the crew. Everyone would be dead again, everyone except…

"Bloody hell!" Reed hissed. How had he missed something so obvious? The missing piece dropped into place with the finality of a death knell. There _was_ , as he'd thought earlier, someone whose life or death was connected to the time loop, someone who he'd left off his notes about each iteration. It was _himself_. How the _hell_ had he been so stupid?

"What? What is it?"

Distracted, Reed looked up at Tucker. "Nothing, I just –"

An alert on the tactical console beeped, drawing Reed's attention before he had time either to process the importance of what he'd just realised or to answer Tucker's question. The display on the screen hit him like a bucket of cold water to the face.

An unknown vessel was approaching the Enterprise, two hundred thousand kilometres away but closing quickly.

* * *

"Malcolm?" Archer's voice was sharp with alarm as he stared at the asymmetrical grey ship growing gradually closer on the view-screen. "Is that it?"

"Aye, sir." Reed fought to keep his voice level.

"I am detecting elevated levels of Cherenkov radiation surrounding the vessel in subspace," T'Pol reported. "The ship appears to be the source of the radiation we detected earlier."

"Why didn't we pick this up sooner?" Archer demanded. "We should have detected this ship long before now."

"Captain, some species are known to use cloaking devices that rely on tachyon particles," T'Pol said. "In particular, the Romulan Empire. I believe this to be such a vessel. We did, in fact, detect it. The area of elevated tachyon radiation we observed some minutes ago was likely this ship, disguised by its cloaking mechanism."

"Damn," Archer muttered. "I thought we'd seen the last of the Romulans. Polarize the armour plating, Lieutenant."

"Aye, sir." Reed had done so as soon as he'd detected the ship.

"I do not believe this is a Romulan vessel, Captain," T'Pol said. "The Romulan Empire has been successful in suppressing the Cherenkov radiation produced by their cloaking devices."

"Weapons, Malcolm?" Archer asked.

"I can't tell, sir." The radiation prevented Reed from getting any readings on the state of the ship's weapons, but he knew well what it was capable of. "Fifty thousand kilometres, sir."

"Drop to one-quarter impulse," Archer ordered Mayweather. "They're catching up anyway. I don't see any point putting it off. Hoshi, hail them."

"No response, sir." _Of course not_.

"Keep trying. Trip, would taking the warp engine offline prevent a core breach if Engineering was hit?"

"I – suppose, sir," Tucker said, startled. "It wouldn't destroy th' ship if we lost containment while th' core was offline. But once we shut down it'll take me a good twelve hours t' get 'er online agin."

"Do it," Archer said, sending Tucker hurrying from the bridge. "Weapons online, Malcolm, but don't fire first."

"Aye, sir. Twenty thousand kilometres."

Watching the hostile ship approach felt surreal. Seconds dragged by infinitely as they waited for something, _anything_ , to happen. Reed kept his eyes fixed on the display in front of him, ready to react at the first sign of aggression and also to avoid looking at the approaching vessel on the view-screen.

The ship came in firing. Reed saw the energy surge a fraction of a second before the first attack.

"Captain –!"

Streaks of ghostly blue light cut the darkness of space and the Enterprise jolted under the barrage, her lights flickering. The bridge had received a direct hit, Reed recognized. He retaliated automatically, firing the phase cannons repeatedly and without apparent effect into the oncoming enemy.

"Report, Trip!" Archer shouted.

 _"We're workin' on it, Captain! Jus' give us another five minutes!"_

They didn't have that long if the other ship kept up the attack. "Armour plating at thirty percent!" Reed warned.

 _"Try reversin' the polarity of th' armor. Keep repolarizin' it, might take them a minute to catch on."_

Reed worked the controls quickly. The ship reeled again, and this time the lights died completely. Someone fell heavily, swearing. Orange flame burst to life from the science console. Powerless to act with the tactical station dead under his hands, Reed stumbled away and groped forward as the ship convulsed again.

"Captain! We have to evacuate!"

"No!" Archer insisted. "Trip? Report!" The comm was dead.

The Enterprise seemed to explode around them. Reed fell sideways, striking his head against a console. Someone screamed. With a tremendous crash, a support beam gave way and smashed down onto the tactical console, its fall lit eerily by spark and flame.

"Captain!" Reed screamed. _Not again. Not now!_

"Go, Malcolm!" Archer's voice was weak, barely audible above the chaos. "You've got to escape! We don't know if –"

 _"Evacuate the ship!"_ The Captain's communicator shrilled to life. _"I'm sorry, Cap'n, we're losin' containment! Git outta here!"_

"No!"

"GO!" Archer shouted, with audible effort. "Get out of here, Malcolm, that's an order!"

Blinded by horror, Reed fled in the direction of the too-familiar access tunnel. The ship seemed to tear itself apart around him. Somehow he could still breathe and move, despite the fact that he'd been thrown into a living hell for the seventh time. Eighth? Ninth? He couldn't remember anymore. Smoke choked him. He fell more than climbed out of the access tube onto B-deck and stumbled down the corridor. _Tucker_. The engineer was still trapped on F-deck. He'd die there. The Captain was still on the bridge, along with Sato and Mayweather and T'Pol. They were all dying at their posts, while he, Reed, was running away like a coward. The fact that he'd been ordered to leave made no difference; he was fleeing, while they stayed to die.

One way or another, he reached an escape pod. The Enterprise jolted away, taking with it his last hope of success. Reed deserted the controls and pressed himself against the port.

If he was running, the least he could do was to witness what he'd left behind and the deaths of the people he'd abandoned.

He had failed again. But he would not fail the next time.


	9. Chapter 9

Disclaimer: Pop quiz - is Star Trek mine? No. Do I own the scientific details in this story? Only a few - the ones that don't make sense.

* * *

How had he possibly missed that _he_ was the key factor, Reed wondered. Not only was he the only one who'd always survived, but he was also the only one who retained memory of previous iterations. Theoretically, as long as he continued to survive, he'd have infinite chances to save the Enterprise. The thought was simultaneously disquieting and reassuring. On the one hand, it gave a sense of security: even if he couldn't save the ship this time, there would be another opportunity. But conversely, reliving these nightmarish four hours on infinite repeat was not an encouraging prospect.

Then, too, was the role he himself played in the loop. If its existence was linked to him, as it appeared to be, what did that mean about how the cycle could be ended? Did it simply mean that he was the only one equipped to break the loop, or was the answer something darker? Did he, perhaps, have to die? If he did die, would the loop be broken at the point he died? Or would it continue to reset indefinitely without him? Would his death perhaps erase his memory of the events, but not prevent further resets? He didn't have enough information. It was maddening. But there had to be an explanation – something that set him apart from everyone else on this ship. There had to be a reason that he was aware of something no one else realised.

Comprehension hit him like a disruptor bolt. _The drug._ That had to be it. Besides the explosion of the warp core, no other facet of the situation had recurred with such consistency. The drug was the one thing that singled him out from the rest of the oblivious crew.

What of Tucker, then? He'd been exposed to the Zytexian perfume too. Reed felt a surge of excitement. Perhaps he could have an ally. If Tucker were to receive a hypospray of the same antihistamine that Reed had, perhaps the effect that kept Reed aware of the resets could be recreated. He'd have to be sure Tucker survived each time though, else there was a chance the engineer could be permanently lost as a casualty of the tangled timeline. _Or not_ , Reed's mind murmured unbidden. _If Trip dies, you'll at least know what will happen if you die._ Assuming, of course, that drugging Tucker would recreate the immunity to the temporal anomaly.

Reed paused, suddenly horrified. Had he actually just considered the _benefits_ of Tucker dying? The thought made him sick. He had no time for guilt, however. There was too much to do and far too little time to allow for the luxury of regret.

Only after Reed had rung the door chime and knocked for several minutes did Tucker appear at the door of his quarters, tousled and clearly aroused from a deep sleep.

"What th' _hell?_ "

"Come with me, Trip. It's an emergency." No time for elaboration. "I'll explain on the bridge."

"What're yew talkin' about?" Tucker blinked, stupefied. Reed resisted the desire to grab him by the wrist and drag him bodily along.

"Commander Tucker," he said urgently, "there is a tactical emergency. I need you to accompany me to the bridge."

Reed ignored Tucker's inarticulate, confused protests and led him briskly up to the bridge. Tucker trailed after him, puzzled and concerned, when the turbolift reached its destination.

"Malcolm? Trip? What are you doing here? You're not on duty until tomorrow."

"Captain," Reed announced with a conviction he had not felt the last time around, "The Enterprise is in danger. One hundred fifty thousand kilometres aft of our position is a cloaked vessel which will attack and destroy us in slightly under three hours." He ignored the stares of the rest of the bridge crew and focused only on Archer's astonished face. "Due to a temporal anomaly, these events will continue to recur until we are able to stop them. I can give you proof of this, sir." He turned boldly to T'Pol. "Sub-Commander, please scan this star system for elevated levels of Cherenkov radiation within subspace."

There was a very long beat of complete silence. T'Pol was the first to break it, looking to Archer with raised eyebrows. "Captain?"

Obviously flummoxed but ever the Captain, Archer gave Reed a hard stare before nodding to her. "Do it."

Reed felt a wave of relief sweep through him. The first hurdle – granted, the smallest – was past.

"Sir," T'Pol protested. "The Vulcan Science Directorate…"

"Has determined time travel to be impossible," Reed finished. "Yes. But Cherenkov radiation indicates the presence of tachyon particles, which have long been considered a possible link to temporal anomalies, in theory. Tachyons are also used in certain cloaking and weapons technology, like that of the cloaked ship following us. Please, Sub-Commander, there's not much time."

Archer, Tucker, and Reed gathered around the tactical station as T'Pol initiated the scan.

"Lieutenant Reed is correct," T'Pol admitted after a long moment, "insofar as suggesting the presence of elevated Cherenkov radiation levels in subspace approximately one hundred and fifty thousand kilometres aft of the Enterprise." She sounded as if saying this were physically uncomfortable.

"Now how th' hell did yew know that?" Tucker asked, astounded and suddenly wide awake.

"It's a long story," Reed said grimly. "I've seen it before." He looked up at Archer. "Sir, we have to stop this from happening again."

Archer rubbed the bridge of his nose briefly. "You're telling me," he said slowly, "that we're in a temporal anomaly, and this –" he indicated the blue spot on T'Pol's scan, "is a cloaked ship that is about to attack us. And that this has already happened before."

"Yes, sir."

"And how is it you know this and we don't?"

"I've been exposed to an alien…substance," Reed said hesitantly. "My current theory is that this substance has somehow rendered me immune to the effects of the temporal anomaly. But it's only a theory. I'm not completely sure. I need you to trust me, sir. Otherwise we're going to be destroyed."

"Lieutenant," T'Pol said stiffly, "Your claims are extremely illogical. Time travel is not possible."

"Then how did I know about the radiation?" Reed challenged her. "This science console is the only place on the ship where such a scan could be run. I couldn't have gotten the information anywhere else. Or do you think I guessed it?" he added cynically.

"You're serious about this, aren't you?" Archer was very serious himself.

"Yes, sir," Reed said, more respectfully. "The last time this happened, you entrusted me with correcting the timeline if we failed to save the ship. I need your help, sir."

"Very well," Archer said, straightening with sudden decisiveness. "What do we need to do, Lieutenant?"

"Our weapons and hull plating are useless against tachyon-based shields and weapons," Reed said. "We need to find a way to combat their technology. But first," he added, "I need you and Commander Tucker to accompany me to Sickbay."

"T' Sickbay? Are yew outta yer mind, Malcolm? Why –?"

"It's a long story," Reed admitted wearily. "I'll explain on the way."

* * *

"An antihistamine?" Phlox contemplated Reed as though he were considering a medical procedure more involved than the administration of a simple allergy medication. "I was not aware that Mr. Tucker suffered from allergies."

"It's not fer allergies, Doc," Tucker supplied helpfully.

"Give him exactly the same medication and dosage you gave me three days ago," Reed requested. "It's very important." An idea occurred to him. "And take a sample of my blood. You'll find a drug, see if you can discover anything about its chemical properties." The more he could find out about why the drug inoculated him against the temporal resets, the better.

Flustered, Phlox turned to Archer. "Captain? May I ask –"

"Just do it, Doctor. I'll explain later…" he trailed off momentarily. "If possible," he added.

The bewildered doctor turned obediently to retrieve the medication.

"What do you know about tachyons?" Archer asked Tucker. The engineer frowned doubtfully.

"Quite a bit, Cap'n, but I'm not sure how much is useful, or even up t' date. I did a thesis on it at the Academy, but that was a long time ago. An' t' be quite honest, I ain't even sure what we're tryin' t' do here."

"Anything to stop a tachyon weapon," Reed said bleakly. "Or break through a shield."

"An' yew said the phase cannons didn't have an effect?" Tucker asked him.

"Not noticeable. We did lose sensors a few seconds later, so I can't be sure."

"What are you thinking, Trip?"

"Well, a tachyon's basically a particle with a negative mass, which lets it move faster than th' speed of light. Unlike positive-mass particles, th' more energy a tachyon loses, th' faster it moves. So if we can energize th' tachyons, say with a supercharged phase cannon, they'd slow down. Theoretically, of course, I ain't sure it's ever been tried."

"And that would take out the shields?"

Tucker shrugged helplessly. "I don' know, Cap'n. It might weaken the tachyon field, that's all I can tell yew."

"What about hull plating?" Reed asked. "Our hull armour was down to thirty percent after the first barrage."

"We'd need some kinda energy shielding. Or…" Tucker went thoughtfully quiet, not seeming to notice even when Phlox, more confused and intrigued than ever from listening to the conversation, injected him with a hypospray before moving to Reed, who absently held out his arm for a blood draw. "Malcolm, how fast d'yew think yer targeting scanners are?"

"How fast do you need them to be?"

"Fast enough to react when th' ship starts firin'. If we can fire as they do, directly into their tachyon beam, that might diffuse it. But yew'd need yer targeting scanners t' be aligned to aim fer a surge in Cherenkov radiation, and yew'd need a mighty fast trigger hand."

"I can do it," Reed said instantly. He had to.

"I'm more worried about th' targetin' scanners," Tucker said. He rubbed at the spot on his arm where he'd been injected. "Am I s'pposed t' be feelin' somethin'?"

"I don't know," Reed admitted. He'd been exposed to the medication in a very different way, so he had no idea whether or not Tucker should experience symptoms.

"Get on it," Archer told them. "I want this…anti-tachyon defence ready as soon as possible."

"What about the core?" Archer and Tucker gazed uncomprehendingly at Reed. "Trip, you said last time that if we shut the warp core down it would prevent a breach from destroying the ship."

"This is weird," Tucker muttered, rubbing the back of his neck. "I never said that."

"But it would work as a precaution," Reed pressed.

"It would. But we'll need th' energy t' boost th' phase cannons."

Reed gritted his teeth in frustration. A similar sentiment must have been evident on Archer's face, because Tucker shook his head apologetically. "I'm sorry, Cap'n, but I can only do one or th' other. If we want t' charge th' weapons enough t' do any good, I'll need t' take energy from th' core."

"Leave the core online, then," the Captain said decisively. "I'll be on the bridge. Keep me updated."

* * *

Tucker squeezed awkwardly into an access tube and pulled the hatch closed behind him while Reed stationed himself at a nearby monitor in the Armoury. He'd ordered the armoury crew on duty to steer clear of the area. At this point extra hands wouldn't be much help, only extra time; besides, the fewer people who knew what was going on, the better. There was no time to appraise the entire crew of the situation, and half-true rumours floating around could only be counterproductive.

Reed checked the chronometer reflexively: 2225 hours. Almost an hour and a half had passed since he'd woken up. It felt like both a shorter and a longer time simultaneously. He had to blink black spots of exhaustion out of his eyes before he could focus properly on the computer screen. _A mighty fast trigger hand_ , indeed. He'd be lucky if he stayed awake until the attack.

 _"Tucker t' Malcolm."_ The voice startled Reed, although he'd been waiting for Tucker's hail.

"Reed here. Go ahead."

 _"I need yew t' keep an eye on power fluctuations in th' phase cannon targetin' grid as I reroute power from th' core. Don' wanna flood th' thing. Tell me if it gits above eighty percent capacity."_

"Right." Reed felt useless. Logically, he knew that someone had to keep a consistent eye on power fluctuations and that anyone else would be highly suspicious as to why energy from the warp core was being rerouted to weapons systems, a dangerous and tricky procedure that could easily result in severe damage to both the warp core and the weapons systems. Besides, now that the targeting scanners had been reconfigured to automatically target increases in Cherenkov radiation, Reed had reached the limit of his expertise and skill as far as further modifications were concerned. What remained was a job for an engineer, not a tactical officer. On a more practical level, there was not much room in the access tube and Tucker would need all the space he could get. Nonetheless, it was difficult to sit inactively while Tucker did all the hands-on work.

 _"Engineerin's ready, Malcolm. I'm getting' started."_

"Copy that."

It had been necessary to involve Tucker's engineering team in the process, although he'd given no reason but a terse "Captain's orders, now git to it," when Commander Kelby had questioned why engine power was needed for tactical systems. Kelby had been disgruntled and had gone so far as to suggest that anyone risking blowing up the power grid just to give the phase cannons a little extra oomph ought to see Doctor Phlox for either a brain scan or a psychological evaluation. Tucker had not taken the suggestion well, and nobody had questioned any further.

Reed fidgeted in his seat and rubbed his forehead wearily as the energy readings flickered consistently between 27.34 and 27.38 percent.

"Anything else I can do, Commander?"

Tucker's chuckle sounded tinny through the comm link. _"Ants in yer pants, Loo-tenant?"_

Reed didn't see how he could laugh. _You'd not be laughing,_ he thought resentfully, _if you had seen the ship destroyed._ It would do no good to say such a thing, though. His headache was returning, a pulsing ache in his forehead that radiated down behind his eyes and into the base of his neck.

 _"Jus' keep me occupied, if yew feel like it. I'm gonna get bored in here, this is purty tedious."_

"Energy fluctuations at 27.39 percent capacity," Reed reported.

 _"I meant talk t'me."_

"Oh." Reed stared awkwardly at the screen in front of him, honestly not sure how to start a conversation. Usually he'd have no trouble falling into discussion with his friend. Somehow, though, these circumstances precluded the kind of light banter or technical debate they'd usually have. What was there to say? _You just died, Trip. Eight times._ The memory seemed to suppress any attempt he might have made at a conversation.

 _"Yew wanna tell me what's bin goin' on?"_

"What?" Reed was distracted from his thoughts. "What do you mean?"

 _"What's bin goin' on fer yew, Malcolm. Obviously yew've been through this a coupla times already."_

"Yes," Reed admitted reluctantly. Tucker allowed a few moments' silence to pass.

 _"Yew wanna talk about it?"_

No. He did not, in fact, want to talk about it. Especially not again, especially not with Tucker. "What do you want to know?" The question came out sounding unintentionally testy. Reed sighed. "I apologize, I didn't mean to snap."

 _"How many times?"_

Reed watched the momentarily motionless 30.02 percent displayed on the screen. "Eight."

 _"Shit! Aw, fuck. Sorry, not you, Malcolm. Jus' burned myself, I'm fine."_ There was the sound of metal clinking on metal. Tucker spoke more quietly. _"Eight times, huh?"_

"Yes. 32.88 percent."

 _"Yew alright?"_

Reed pictured worried blue eyes watching him across the tactical console on the bridge. _Yew alright?_ He had abruptly to fight down a surge of panic.

"I – yes. I'm fine."

 _"Must've been rough on yew."_

"I'll be fine, Trip."

 _"I'm not askin' that, Mal."_

Reed wasn't sure where to go from there. At last, to prevent Tucker from thinking he was offended, he volunteered quietly, "I just want to get this done as soon as possible."

 _"I know. But we both know this is a bit of a long shot. If it doesn't work…"_

"It'll work." _It has to._

 _"It's gonna be okay, Mal."_

Reed was glad for the impersonal separation the comm link provided, because he had to force back a swell of anxiety and fear. "Trip," he ventured quietly, "you died. And the Captain, and – everyone. I couldn't –" he stopped, hurt, not sure what to say or if he dared to go on.

 _"It's not yer fault."_

The words startled Reed. It hadn't occurred to him to fully think through _fault_ ; that had seemed less important than stopping the infernal cycle. But Tucker's words struck at a sore spot he hadn't realised existed. At some level, he was responsible, wasn't he? After all, he was the one who consistently survived while his shipmates, his friends, died.

"Maybe not." He sounded unconvincing, even to himself. Tucker surprised him by laughing.

 _"Jus' think, Malcolm, if it weren't fer yer allergies, we might be stuck in this loop ferever an' never know it."_

In an odd sense, that might be true. If the drug was responsible for his immunity in the resets, then his awareness of the time loop was indeed thanks to his allergies. He couldn't resist a wry grin.

"I'd as soon have no allergies and no temporal anomalies, Commander."

Tucker chuckled breathlessly. _"An' I'd sooner be in bed sleepin' than wranglin' this relay. Guess – we can't all have what we want – huh?"_

"Are you alright?" Reed asked, concerned.

 _"Fine, jus' a little warm in here. Good thing I ain't claustrophobic."_

"39.06 percent, Commander."

 _"I hear yew, Mal. What's –"_

"Trip? What's wrong?"

 _"Holy fuck!"_ Tucker's voice was a tense hiss. _"There's somethin' in here, Malcolm! It's – shit!"_

Cold prickles of dread crept on Reed's back. "What is it? Trip!"

 _"I can't tell. There's somethin' – it's huntin' me, Mal! What the –!"_

The comm channel broke off. Reed sprang up and threw himself across the room to the access hatch, jerking it open and scrambling up into the tube in a single, swift moment, headache forgotten in his urgency. He saw Tucker's light wavering frantically up and down.

"Trip!"

Tucker came hurtling along the tunnel. Reed barely managed to maintain his crouched balance as the engineer crashed into him. "Fuck! Malcolm? There's somethin' there!"

He was shaking, sweaty, and pale. Reed took the light from him and aimed it down the access tube. The blank grey bulkhead stared back from the far end. The tunnel was empty but for Tucker's tools lying abandoned on the deck halfway down the tube.

"Where? There's nothing there."

"Behind yew," Tucker managed in a horrified whisper. Reed whipped around and found himself face-to-face with empty air. That side of the tube was completely empty, too.

"It was here," Tucker said shakily. "I'm not kiddin', Mal. I saw it. Some kinda alien…It was huntin' me. I could feel it."

Reed examined him critically in the light. Tucker looked nauseous and thoroughly unnerved, almost panicked.

"Are you sure you're not claustrophobic?" He'd heard of people imagining things when frightened by being trapped. Tucker grabbed Reed's arm as if to steady himself.

"I'm serious! It was here!"

A nagging memory tugged suspiciously at the corner of Reed's mind. "Was it sort of a shadowy thing? Brushed up against you?"

"Yes!" Tucker stared at him wildly. "Did you see it?"

Reed sat back on his heels and breathed a sigh of relief, wiping sweat from his forehead. "You're hallucinating, Trip." It felt oddly hypocritical to say the words after having them directed so many times at himself.

"I'm what?" Tucker was indignant. "I swear, Malcolm –"

"No, listen. That drug from the Zytexian perfume and Phlox's medicine – it's a hallucinogenic compound. I saw the same thing the first time around. It's just a hallucination."

"I don't know." Tucker was still trembling, though he sounded a little calmer. "Seemed pretty real t' me."

"I remember." Reed patted him sympathetically, if awkwardly, on the arm. "Do you need to switch out? If you tell me what to do…"

"No. No, I'm fine." With a visible effort, Tucker sat up and took back the light. He peered suspiciously down the access tube. "Yer sure it's not real?"

"Yes. Are _you_ sure you don't want a break?"

"Yeah." Tucker was already crawling back down the tube. "No offense, Mal. But even hallucinatin' I can probably do this better'n yew."

"No arguments there," Reed said gratefully. He was no slouch when it came to engineering, but Tucker's procedure was a delicate process that he wouldn't want to trust to anyone but an experienced engineer. Knowing that Tucker was hallucinating, however, did not boost Reed's confidence. He'd said earlier that their efforts would work, but his certainty of that was steadily slipping.

Tucker's gasp caught Reed's attention. "What is it?"

"Dammit, dammit!" Tucker dropped his scanner, snatched up a hypospanner, and began to work feverishly over the conduit. "Power fluctuations – damn!" His voice went sharp with alarm. "Get out of here, Malcolm!"

A second later he abandoned the conduit and flung himself away, back toward the hatch and Reed. " _Git out!_ "

The access tube exploded in a mass of orange and white fire. Pieces of plastic and metal hurtled through the enclosed space like shrapnel. Smoke surged out of a gaping hole in the tube. The blast snatched Reed in a hot grip of flame and sound and flung him headfirst into the bulkhead. Stunned, burned, and struggling to think with his mind swimming dizzily from physical and mental shock, Reed pushed himself shakily onto his elbows. His communicator, having somehow escaped destruction, chirped angrily. The chime barely registered in his ringing ears, but the Captain's order cracked like a whip.

 _"Lieutenant, report!"_

Reed fumbled for the communicator with hands gone numb and stiff. "I – I don't – the conduit blew, I don't know –"

 _"Trip?"_ A single word, but one that galvanised Reed into action. The engineer, he recalled in horror, had been closer to the epicentre of the blast.

Forcing himself to hands and knees, Reed squinted dazedly into the confusion of smoke and fire before him. Several metres away, Tucker lay crumpled against the bulkhead. Blood glistened dully in the flickering light of the fire. It was impossible to tell in this smoky dimness how badly Tucker was hurt.

An unexpected vibration knocked Reed sideways, almost throwing him off balance. Through the open comm link to the bridge, Reed heard someone screaming.

 _"We're being fired on, Malcolm!"_ Archer shouted. _"They must've seen the energy surge. Can you –"_

Another deafening rumble of vibration cut comm link off abruptly. Reed crawled feebly forward to Tucker's side. His hand encountered raw flesh as he reached out. He fought bile in his throat.

"Trip? Trip!"

The engineer moaned weakly. He was barely conscious, but at least he was alive. Reed slid his hands under Tucker's arms and hauled him, a few centimetres at a time, away from the fire and toward the hatch. He fell more than stepped out of it as the ship shook again. Tucker's limp form slithered out on top of him and flopped onto the deck face-first.

Tucker made a choked, inhuman sound of agony as Reed sat up and rolled him over. The engineer's face had ceased to bear resemblance to any part of a functioning human body. Only the numbness of pure shock prevented Reed from vomiting. What had been Tucker's face was now part of a gory mess of blood and scorched flesh extending down from the head and over the chest to one mashed shoulder. In the hazy dimness the gaping wound appeared black. Perhaps it was black, burnt to a crisp by the explosion. But despite the horrific injury, Tucker was alive.

In the chaos around them, people were screaming and shouting and running. Reed felt that he and Tucker were alone in silence; nothing seemed to penetrate the dull haze his mind had sunk into. With excruciating slowness, he dragged Tucker out of the demolished armoury and down the D-deck corridor. He had no specific objective consciously in mind, but he found himself at the hatch of an escape pod. With substantial effort he pulled the engineer inside it, then climbed out again and staggered aimlessly along the hall. He had the vague idea of finding someone else, anyone else, and bringing them to the pod, but the hall was deserted and filled with smoke.

Reed had no communicator to alert him when the final burst of weapon fire struck Engineering, but the sickening jolt was recognisable by now. He had to leave; there was no time left. Somehow he made it back to the pod and launched it to the accompaniment of Tucker's hoarse moans.

As soon as they had cleared the ship, Reed left the controls and fumbled in the port storage compartment for a medkit. He managed to spill most of the contents across the floor when the shockwave from the Enterprise's detonation battered the little craft. There was nothing in the medkit equipped to handle Tucker's injuries, though if there had been Reed would not have known how to use it. He found a single-use hypospray of analgesic and injected it into the engineer's leg to avoid touching his wounds. Then he knelt by Tucker's head and tried to prevent the injured man from clutching at his ruined face.

"Don't, Trip. Stay still. It'll be over soon." His voice faltered over the words, both from fear that somehow this would be the final timeline and from the devastation of having to start over again. "It'll all be over soon. You'll be fine."

He could feel Tucker's life seeping away under his fingers. The engineer needed medical attention or he would die.

"Reset," Reed begged under his breath. "Please. Please, don't die yet."

Tucker stopped breathing.


	10. Chapter 10

Disclaimer: Nope. Nada. Zip. Zero. I only claim the plot.

* * *

Reed woke with single-minded purpose. Was Tucker alive? Had he been restored by the reset? The resets had restored an entire dead crew, including Tucker, multiple times before. However, in none of these resets had Tucker been vaccinated against the temporal effects. And assuming he was alive and well, would Tucker remember what had happened? If he did, it was a twofold benefit. Reed would have an ally, and he'd also know for sure that it was the drug which protected him from the temporal anomaly. To add to the benefits, they now had a game plan. It was only the result of unfortunate coincidences that they'd failed the last time. _Coincidences, and your fault. You should have been watching the energy readings._ Reed brushed the thought away with minimal difficulty. Guilt was easier to ignore now that he had a specific, defined mission to execute.

He hurried from his quarters and nearly collided with an ashen-faced Tucker ten metres down the corridor. He'd never been so pleased to see the engineer. Tucker, on the other hand, looked like he'd seen a ghost.

"Malcolm!" the engineer stared openly at him, face written in clear lines of uncertainty and alarm.

"Do you remember?" Reed asked intently, although Tucker's presence and expression alone were enough to answer the question.

"Yew mean –" Tucker gaped. "How do you – I wasn't dreamin'? It was real?"

Blissful relief flooded through Reed. It didn't matter that the last image he had of Tucker was watching his mutilated friend writhe on the floor of an escape pod in unbearable pain; Tucker was alive and uninjured now, and he remembered. Reed was no longer alone in this horrific nightmare.

"Yes. It was real." He nearly hugged Tucker, but held himself back at the last moment with a firm reminder of what professional conduct was and was _not_. The engineer, however, was bound by no such inhibitions and clasped Reed's shoulder warmly.

"Malcolm, thank goodness. Are yew okay?"

"Am I?" Reed was genuinely startled by the question. "Trip, I wasn't hurt. Are _you_ okay?"

"Fine." Tucker brushed off the query. "You were talkin' to me, weren't you? Yew sounded scared."

"I wasn't sure if it would be permanent," Reed admitted. "When you…died."

"I died?" Tucker's eyes widened.

"Yes," Reed said shortly. Tucker whistled and ran a hand through his hair.

"No shit."

"Yeah."

Tucker looked grave for a moment, then brushed off the tension. "Well, not anymore. What now?"

"Now," Reed said grimly, "we try to convince Captain Archer that his ship is in danger without giving him the impression that we are insane."

"But he…oh. He don't remember?"

"He doesn't know yet," Reed corrected. Tucker looked at him with newfound respect.

"How many times did yew do this?"

"It doesn't matter. Come on." Reed led the way to the turbolift. "Maybe I should explain," he hazarded. "I've had…practice."

"Yer the boss. I'll back yew up." Reed nodded approvingly as the elevator rose toward the bridge.

"Malcolm? Trip? What are you doing here? You're not on duty until tomorrow."

Reed registered out of the corner of his eye Tucker's startled falter at hearing Archer's familiar greeting as they stepped onto the bridge, but the novelty of repeating events had worn off for him.

"Captain," Reed said, "The Enterprise is in danger."

* * *

"30.39 percent, Commander."

There was no conversation this time, no distraction or levity. Reed watched the energy reading hawk-like despite his headache and exhaustion. For what seemed the first time in a long while, he felt real hope. This time they knew the traps to avoid. This time it could work, and if it did…he'd finally get to sleep. He pondered the thought wistfully without taking his eyes off the screen. Rest was a distant and surreal luxury. Reed caught himself fantasizing about sinking down onto his bunk and winced self-consciously.

"32.68 percent."

 _"I read you, Malcolm. I'm almost done."_

Archer had been easier to persuade this time, both because Reed now knew the words to convince him and because he was backed up by Tucker. Predictably, T'Pol had insisted that there was no such thing as time travel despite the evidence provided by her own scans, but the Captain had overruled her and given his full support as soon as he was convinced of the reality of the danger.

On the computer screen, the reading flickered and jumped. Reed's adrenaline surged. This was the danger point that had destroyed them last time.

"53 percent and rising, Trip."

 _"I hear yew. I've got it. Jus' a few more seconds…"_

"65 percent and still rising."

 _"C'mon, c'mon,"_ Tucker panted at the conduit. _"Almost there."_

"76 percent, Trip! Hurry!" The armoury lights flickered worryingly. "It's over eighty, you'd better get out –"

 _"Yes!"_ Tucker gave a muted grunt of triumph. _"Got it!"_

The energy fluctuations dropped as soon as they had jumped. Reed slumped forward with relief and let out an involuntary sigh. He allowed himself a brief moment to rest his head in his hands. The next thing he knew, Tucker was at his shoulder, sweaty and greasy but victorious.

"Yew okay, Mal?"

It was an effort to raise his head. Reed's headache had increased and now that the momentary crisis had passed he felt limp with weariness.

"Yeah. Just tired." He stood slowly. "I'll be fine."

Tucker surveyed him critically. "Are yew gonna be able to handle the phase cannons? I'd rather have yew than anyone else, but if yer too tired…"

"No!" Reed did not intend to snap, but Tucker of all people questioning his competence was too much to bear. "I am quite competent to handle weapons, Commander, I assure you." The words came out bitingly sarcastic. Reed regretted it as soon as he spoke. Tucker drew back, hurt and angry.

"I'm sure yew are, Loo-tenant. Tell the Cap'n I'll be in engineerin'." He left without giving Reed a chance to answer. Feeling wretched, Reed went up to the bridge to take his station at the tactical console.

"Report, Lieutenant?"

"Targeting scanners online, Captain. We're ready."

Archer nodded tightly. "Very well. Prepare to break orbit, Ensign Mayweather. We may as well try for a peaceful exit."

Reed would as soon have taken the remaining quarter of an hour until 2344 to sleep rather than to attempt a fruitless escape, but orders were orders. He focused all his attention on the console in front of him, poised to react as soon as the targeting scanners found a radiation surge.

"All ready, Trip?"

 _"Aye aye, Cap'n."_

Reed felt another twinge of regret at the harsh words he'd spoken to the engineer. He'd make it up to him when this was all over.

"Take us out, Mr. Mayweather."

* * *

"Twenty thousand kilometres, sir."

The grey ship bore down on them in ominous communications silence. Reed watched it growing steadily closer through unaccountably cloudy vision. He performed a quick self-assessment which turned up nothing worse than the same bad headache he'd been nursing for the last few days…hours…for some time, anyway. Tiredness, then. It would soon be alleviated by adrenaline.

The targeting sensors detected the first radiation flare a split second before Reed saw it. He pounced on the phase cannon controls and fired, with no time to alert the rest of the bridge crew.

The energy blast that he unleashed was so strong and so sudden that it rocked the entire ship and almost knocked him from his seat. Archer gripped the back of his seat to remain standing. Reed perused his sensors frantically, unsure whether the Enterprise had been hit or if the jolt had been the feedback of their own upgraded weapon.

"Report!" Archer demanded. Reed did not have time to answer before he had to react to the next burst of enemy fire. The ship shook once more, but there was no sear of energy weapons on her hull, no crashing debris and sparks. The lights flickered slightly but Reed knew the answer before his sensors confirmed it.

"It's working, Captain! If we can hold them off –"

Something seemed to break loose in Reed's head and a wave of pain stabbed through his skull. _Concentrate._ Forget talking; he had a job to do and it was all he could do to remember how to do that job. He looked down at the console in front of him and saw a checkerboard of black and red. A distant static buzz clogged his ears.

 _Focus._

Sharp pain exploded in Reed's face as something slammed into it. A hot, sticky liquid trickled over his upper lip. Dazed and disoriented, he opened his eyes to find the control panel pressing against his face.

Someone grabbed him by the shoulder and pushed him aside with unintentional roughness. Reed barely caught himself with his hands on the deck as Archer forced him out of the way. He sat up dizzily, unsure what had happened. One minute he'd been fine and the next he couldn't see or hear anything but red and black and a crackling roar. He wiped a hand across his face and it came away smeared with dark blood. He must have blacked out momentarily and bloodied his face on the controls.

Sparks fountained from a conduit in the bulkhead. Reed was knocked back to the floor by the shock of a weapon blast. Archer shouted something that no one heard as the bridge came apart. The power died but the room was lit by an electric fire bursting to life. Above Reed, something snapped and fell.

With a tremendous crash, the support beam over the tactical station gave way and dropped, its jagged broken end swinging a lethal half-parabola to crush the tactical console like a wrecking ball. As it fell, Archer half-turned in time to catch much of the blow straight in the chest. It smashed him flat to the floor and sank into his crushed ribcage.

"Captain!" Reed screamed. Everything was too loud, too fast, too hot and bright and bloody. He crawled on hands and knees to Archer's side. The Captain's eyes were wide and glazed with shock. Across the wreckage of what had been the bridge, someone was screaming for help. The Enterprise jerked again. In the chaos and dizziness, Reed did not know how bad the hit had been. He struggled to hold onto consciousness, which was persistently trying to escape.

"Malcolm!" Sato was at his elbow. Reed hadn't seen her coming through the pandemonium both inside and outside of his own mind. "Come with me!" She pulled as much as helped him away from the dying Captain, away from the bridge, away to the safety of a small metal capsule, a feeble refuge from the blinding blue shockwave of the ship's death.

"It's my fault," Reed choked. "I'm so sorry. It's my fault." Archer was dead. The crew was dead. It was his fault directly this time. He'd signed their death warrants.

Sato shook Reed firmly by the shoulders. "Malcolm. Look at me. You've got to keep it together. Look at me."

He obeyed automatically through a fog of guilt and self-recrimination. Sato's face was white and set.

"You're our only hope. You have to do this again, and you have to keep doing it whatever it takes. Okay? Promise me, Malcolm. Promise."

"I'm sorry, Hoshi." He couldn't do it. No matter how many times he tried, it would only end this way – with him fleeing the glittering remnants of the demolished Enterprise, leaving behind his dead crew.

"No." Sato shook him again, her voice urgent. "You must keep trying. Promise me, Malcolm." She leaned close into him and touched her forehead to his. "You have to save us. All of us. Don't give up. Do you understand?"

Reed nodded speechlessly.


	11. Chapter 11

Disclaimer: I think Star Trek is the best thing since sliced bread. Unfortunately, it wasn't my idea. Neither was sliced bread.

* * *

Reed woke with his heart beating out of his chest and the taste of blood and Hoshi's kiss in his mouth. More than any actual feeling, it was the shock of the kiss that had broken his stupefied haze of misery. Reed might remember failing his Captain and crew, but as far as any of them were concerned it had never happened. He had another chance. With Tucker's help he could make this work. Except, he thought with an odd sensation of wry regret, he would have to find another _mighty fast trigger hand_ , one that wasn't exhausted and hurting and likely to pass out at the worst possible time.

But this time, they'd make it. All he had to do was get Tucker, explain the situation yet again to the Captain, and find someone who'd stay awake to defend the ship.

He'd made a mess of things, but it could be fixed.

"Reed to Tucker."

He waited expectantly but the comm reflected his own silence impassively back.

"Reed to Tucker. Come in, Commander."

Reed's stomach crawled coldly as the comm link neglected to bring him Tucker's reply. The wait grew intolerable. Reed left his quarters and hurried through B-deck to the engineer's quarters. He rung the chime and knocked hard to no avail.

With shaking hands Reed entered his security access code into the door panel to override the lock. The door swept smoothly open.

"Trip?" Reed hesitated at the doorway. "Commander Tucker?"

He stepped inside and flipped the lights on, knowing half a second before the room lit up what he would, and would not find. The sheets on Tucker's bed were rumpled and disarranged, as if the bunk had been recently slept on. A uniform was bundled untidily in a corner by the bathroom door. On the disorganized but clean desk stood familiar pictures that he'd seen before on the few occasions he'd been in Tucker's quarters: family photos of a large blond clan of grinning Tuckers, a picture of the Enterprise, one of Tucker posing proudly with Archer in front of the First Contact Monument in Montana, and one other he hadn't seen before. It was a photo of himself and Tucker playing chess in the mess hall. The photo had clearly been taken at a moment when neither of them had been aware. In it, Tucker beamed smugly at a Reed whose expression displayed equal parts exasperation and amusement.

Reed remembered the occasion well. Tucker had challenged him to chess – an unusual request, given that the engineer was an infamously bad chess player and Reed a notoriously good one. Anticipating an easy victory, Reed had fallen into conversation with Sato as he played, only to find himself unexpectedly losing to an unendurably smug Tucker. Upon thorough questioning, Tucker had admitted to being tutored in the game by T'Pol, the only person on the ship capable of posing a serious challenge to Reed. Apparently, this was the moment at which the picture had been taken. Reed had won the game in the end, but not easily.

He hadn't known that Tucker had a picture of them together on his desk. Ordinarily he might have been honoured and even touched, but in the current situation it made him feel ill.

Tucker was conspicuous only in his absence from his quarters. Reed searched twice to give himself time to avoid thinking.

In the end, he had to give up. Tucker was gone; there was no question. Reed sank onto the edge of the bed and buried his face in his hands. The reset had not restored Tucker. By immunizing Tucker against the temporal anomaly, Reed had effectively murdered him. Tucker was gone, and the last time Reed had spoken to him he'd snapped in petty irritation.

Tucker was dead. _Trip_ was dead.

But why now, why this time? He'd died the previous time and been restored to full life and health. Why not now? Tucker's empty quarters held no answer.

Reed bit the inside of his mouth viciously until he tasted blood to stop the burning in his eyes. He thought of Sato's dark scared eyes and the intensity of her voice, the pressure of her mouth on his. _You're our only hope. Promise me, Malcolm._ He shook himself to his feet. He couldn't afford to fall apart, not now. That would have to wait until the crisis was past and he had time to think about the fact that Tucker was dead and it was his fault. Grief was a luxury he did not have time for now.

And – wasn't it just slimly possible that Tucker was somewhere else on the ship? That he had awoken, knowing what was happening, and left his quarters without coming to find Reed? The only place from which the ship could be scanned for Tucker's bio-signs was the place where Reed was headed anyway.

"Where's Commander Tucker?"

Reed directed the question at T'Pol as he burst onto the bridge, almost running into the opening turbolift doors in his haste to get out. The Vulcan stared at him as if he had instead asked her to perform a somersault.

"He's not in his quarters. Scan the ship," Reed demanded.

"Malcolm? What's going on?" Archer rose from his chair, forehead creased in complete bewilderment. "What about Trip?"

"He's gone," Reed insisted. "I can't find him anywhere, he's not in his quarters." The fact that Tucker's quarters did not constitute "everywhere" did not occur to him in the moment.

"Why are you looking for him?" Archer asked, confused. "I thought you'd be sleeping by now."

"Scan the ship," Reed begged. "Just do it."

Accompanied by the astonished gazes of the bridge crew, Archer went to the comm. "Archer to Commander Tucker. Come in, Trip."

There was no answer. The silence stretched alarmingly.

"I told you," Reed burst out. "Captain, he's gone."

Archer brushed past him to T'Pol's station, frowning. "Scan the ship for Trip's bio-signs, Sub-Commander."

T'Pol scanned and inspected the readout with an indecipherable expression. "Captain," she admitted after a long pause, "I am unable to locate Commander Tucker's bio-sign aboard the Enterprise."

Reed felt a physical sinking sensation in his stomach. He'd known instinctively ever since his hail had not been answered, but to have Tucker's absence confirmed was nonetheless comparable to receiving a disruptor bolt to the midsection.

"What?" Archer stared at her. "Where is he?"

"I do not know. Sensors indicate one canine, one Vulcan, one Denobulan, and eighty humans aboard this vessel."

"That can't be right." Archer leaned past her to examine the screen. "Was there any unauthorized transporter activity? Are the shuttle pods and escape pods accounted for?"

"There is no sign of transporter activity," T'Pol said. "The shuttle pods are both docked, and all escape pods are accounted for. Captain, I believe the internal sensors may be malfunctioning."

"They aren't," Reed insisted. "He's gone, sir. There's been a temporal anomaly, Trip was – killed, or – I don't know. We're about to be attacked, sir, we have to reroute power from the warp core to the phase cannons and configure the targeting scanners to –"

"Whoa, Malcolm." Archer approached him slowly, both hands up as if he were calming a skittish Porthos. "Hold on. What are you talking about? You're not making any sense."

"You have to listen to me, Captain." Reed seethed with frustration. "We have to hurry. Scan for Cherenkov radiation, you'll find a cloaked ship. It's about to attack us at 2344 hours –"

"Lieutenant," T'Pol said, "you appear to be confused."

He was the only one on the whole bloody ship, Reed thought furiously, who could see clearly. "Captain, please. It's true. The Enterprise will be destroyed if you don't let me –"

"Captain, I believe Lieutenant Reed is ill," T'Pol said over him, staring at Reed intently. "Perhaps it would be best if he were to report to Sickbay."

"No!" Reed recoiled, watching in horror as his efforts fell apart. "I'm fine. You must believe me!"

"Take it easy, Malcolm." Archer put a calming hand on his shoulder. "It's alright. We'll find Trip, I'm sure it's just a sensor malfunction."

Reed was at his limit. "It is NOT," he declared loudly, "a sensor malfunction. The Enterprise is about to be destroyed."

"Everything is fine," Archer insisted gently. "We're going to Sickbay, Lieutenant. I'll walk you there."

This was maddening. Why couldn't they see that he was serious? Reed shook free of Archer. "No. I won't go! Not again!"

He saw Archer look past him, but there was no time to turn. Long, firm Vulcan fingers descended on his shoulder and closed around a nerve point. The bridge disappeared into darkness.

* * *

Reed's neck ached abominably. He felt like the recipient of an inexperienced headlock from an overenthusiastic self-defence student. He was on his back on a firm but not uncomfortable surface, and he knew by the sounds around him that he was in Sickbay, even before he opened his eyes. The squeaks and jittering of Phlox's creatures were unmistakable, besides which he could hear the doctor moving around nearby.

Reed opened his eyes and found himself lying on a biobed behind a familiar curtain. Somewhat to his surprise, he was not bound. He briefly considered pleading his case to the Doctor, but upon seeing the chronometer – 2319 hours – decided against it. The Denobulan would no doubt have discovered the drug in Reed's body by now and therefore would consider anything he said to be mere demented ravings, besides which it was already too late to make the modifications which would at least give the Enterprise a fighting chance. It was too late. He shut his eyes again in misery. Tucker was dead by his doing, the Enterprise would be destroyed once more, and the loop would reset yet again.

Reed considered the loop with a sinking feeling in his stomach. Even if the Enterprise escaped from the enemy ship, there was no assurance that the timeline would resolve itself. If, as he thought, there was a temporal anomaly involved, this window of time would continue to run on repeat regardless of whether the Enterprise was destroyed or whether it escaped. Time kept getting hung up on something and jerking back to 2058 hours, and that wouldn't likely change even if the ship was saved. Reed was not arrogant enough to believe that some higher power was giving him infinite chances to save his ship. There was a scientific explanation for what was happening; so rationally, there was a focal point for the time loop.

The presence of Cherenkov radiation in the star system was enough to suggest a temporal anomaly, but logic indicated that the radiation could not be the _cause_ of the anomaly. If it were, then surely the loop would circle around the point of highest radiation levels; namely, the moment that the Enterprise was attacked, when the grey ship engaged its tachyon-based weapons. Instead, the time window began when Reed awoke in his quarters, and ended after more or less everyone but him was dead. The pattern was too obvious to miss. Not only was he the only one aware of what was happening, but the loop coincided with particular events that happened to him.

Not that there was a personal connection, Reed thought. No, it was not _he_ who was important to the temporal anomaly – rather, it was the drug which Phlox would currently be finding so interesting. After all, Tucker had been immunized against the time loop so that he remembered previous events, which was in itself proof that the drug was somehow involved.

So, how to purge the drug? More importantly, what would happen afterward? Would eliminating the drug create a final reset after which events would be cemented in place, or would the temporal anomaly cease to exist the minute the drug was counteracted?

The drug, Reed realised, had been around much longer than the temporal loop. He'd been exposed to it long before – on the Zytexian ship. Apparently it had taken two days of exposure to the alien perfume to build up a high enough toxicity for it to interact with the antihistamine; hence the reason that he had not experienced hallucinations until he was back on board the Enterprise, and why Tucker, his body already charged with the alien substance, had experienced symptoms within an hour. But how exactly did the drug relate to the time loop?

Perhaps, Reed thought, the temporal anomaly had begun with his first exposure to the drug, and the symptoms – the fruiting body of the hidden fungus – had not become apparent until 2058 hours. Perhaps the anomaly extended back to his time on the Zytexian ship, when the drug had first begun to form. If so, then its destruction might reverse more than just the last three or four hours. Maybe, Reed thought with a surge of hope, it would reset the timeline to when he'd been on the Zytexian ship. It might even restore Tucker. Not that he could count on that.

Still, Reed was sure that the elimination of the drug was the key to breaking out of the temporal cycle. The only problem was that Phlox would not finish his antidote in time. When Reed had gone straight to Phlox, thinking he was crazy, the Doctor had been several hours away from having a cure synthesized at 2344 hours. That was too long. Even supposing Reed could memorize the chemical formula of the antidote Phlox developed and somehow convince the doctor to begin synthesizing it within moments after the reset, it would still take too long.

But the drug had to go, one way or another. Reed forced away a prickle of uneasiness and focused on the nearest task at hand – how to ensure another reset for himself. Now that Tucker was gone, Reed had discovered that even with the drug, another reset was not guaranteed.

The key was that he could not die in the ship's explosion. That was what had eliminated Tucker from the timeline. If he died of an injury, as evidenced by Tucker's first death after being drugged, the loop would simply reset and restore him. But if he died in the ship's explosion, he would be permanently gone and the time loop would continue without anyone else on the Enterprise ever realising.

Which made perfect sense, when he thought about it. The drug had to be _destroyed_. The simple death by injury of its host would not suffice; the drug had to be eliminated completely, presumably by either physical or chemical means. But the chemical means to destroy the drug did not exist – or at least would take too long to create.

Reed felt a chill numbness settle over him along with the revelation he'd been trying to avoid.

To break the time loop, he would have to die – not just die, but die in a particular way. He would have to be vaporised to wipe out every trace of the drug that apparently triggered temporal anomalies as well as simple hallucinations.

Reed felt oddly calm about the realisation, as if he'd known it all along without putting it into words. He was prepared to give his life for his crew. He'd always known that he would be willing to do so if necessary. He just had never expected it to happen like this. To go down in a firefight was one thing; to carry out your own execution, with full premeditation, was in another league altogether.

Silently, he laid out his game plan.

He had to be sure the Enterprise would survive before he ended the time loop. First, he'd have to modify the phase cannons. Just to be sure of the grey ship's destruction, he could also modify a few torpedoes to have an extremely high energy yield, enough to counteract the ship's tachyon shielding and destroy it. Then, while the fully-prepared Enterprise defeated the hostile vessel, he could slip away in the chaos and end the temporal anomaly for good.

All he had to do in this iteration of the timeline was to be absolutely sure that he did not die in the ship's explosion, thus unintentionally ending the temporal anomaly too soon. He couldn't let that happen, not now that he had the solution. Fortunately, there was a way to ensure he wouldn't die in the destruction of the ship. He wouldn't have much difficulty stealing something from Phlox that would do the trick.

Reed slipped off the biobed and crept out from behind the curtain on the side opposite from Phlox's office. He glanced around; the Doctor was not in the habit of leaving medications lying around, but there had to be something, somewhere.

He found a locked cabinet with a list of medication names in small writing beside the handle. He crouched beside it, reading off the drugs inside. Most of the names were meaningless to his untrained eyes, but he recognised _phenobarbital_ and _pentobarbital_ as two powerful sedatives. Good. Painless, then. He'd just drift off to sleep and wake in his quarters without knowing what had happened afterward. His stomach writhed with nerves.

Dammit, why couldn't he be calm about this? He'd run through a million scenarios in his mind involving danger and death, preparing himself mentally for any eventuality. Granted, he'd never imagined anything quite like this, but surely he should be able to control the panicky wriggling in his gut. And anyway he was just going to sleep this time. He was going to wake up again. It was only temporary.

Even so, it was with shaking fingers that he decoded the lock. Tucker had taught him how to decode locks several months ago, after some imbecile had managed to change Reed's door code as a joke, leaving him stranded outside his quarters. He'd never thought that he'd use the trick to break into Phlox's medicine cabinets. It was oddly ironic, though, that Tucker was helping him even now by something he'd done months ago.

Silently he inventoried the contents of the cabinet and drew out two hyposprays labelled _pentobarbital_. The dosage could be set from 10 to 500 milligrams, with a total of six maximum dosages in the hypospray. He'd administer two full hyposprays to be safe, since he didn't know exactly how much was a lethal dose. He would have to do it quickly to make sure he didn't pass out from the effects of the barbiturate before he gave himself the full amount.

The hyposprays beeped a soft warning at him as he removed the automatic dosage restriction. With the restriction removed, the full contents of the hypospray would be administered. Reed wondered why it was possible to remove the quantity restriction at all. Did starship doctors expect to have to perform euthanasia while on a mission, or was it in case the hypospray had to be used as a makeshift weapon? He shook his head to clear his mind, berating himself. It didn't matter why, it just made things simpler for him. He touched the first hypospray to his arm and paused at a sudden, alarming thought.

He'd been operating under the assumption that upon his death the timeline would immediately reset. However, it occurred to him that this might not be the case. Supposing the reset was fixed at an arbitrary point after the destruction of the Enterprise? If the ship was attacked and destroyed with his dead body still lying in Sickbay, the alien drug in his body would be eliminated, possibly inadvertently cementing the timeline.

Reed struggled to analyse his motives for questioning. Was he stalling from cowardice, or was there a legitimate element to his sudden doubt? Undecided, he checked the chronometer: 2342. It would all be over soon anyway – shouldn't he just make his way to an escape pod and wait for the reset to happen anyway? That would be the safer way. He had to be sure he'd wake up alive after the next reset.

To an escape pod it was.

"Mr. Reed?"

Phlox's voice from inside the curtain around the biobed startled Reed, who jumped. The hypospray hissed. Reed gasped in shock and horror as a full hypospray of pentobarbital was administered directly into his bloodstream. Sickening dizziness washed over him and the hypospray clattered away on the deck. Reed leaned back against the open cabinet, panting and fighting to remain conscious. He barely noticed the contents of the cabinet clattering out around him, knocked from their respective places as he slumped against it.

"Lieutenant!" Phlox's voice was suddenly close and sharp with worry. A hand lifted the empty hypospray from the floor. "What did you take?"

Sickbay was darkening into a blurry fog. Reed couldn't see Phlox anymore. He heard the distant, alarmed beeping of a medical scanner. _Doctor, you have to take me to an escape pod,_ he tried to say, but his mouth was full of cotton and the words refused to form. As Sickbay dissolved around him, Phlox's voice punctured through the fog one last time, laced with fear and desperation.

"Malcolm, what have you done?"


	12. Chapter 12

Disclaimer: I'm running out of creative ways to say I don't own Star Trek. In case this hasn't sunk in yet, it's not mine. Neither are plutonium isotopes. Credit goes to Wikipedia for having lots of helpful information about fissile and non-fissile radioactive isotopes.

AN: Wow, you'd think I really hate Malcolm! Nah...I just like messing with him. It's a hobby. Don't judge. ;)

* * *

Reed woke gasping for breath and half-convinced he was dying of a drug overdose. It took him a few minutes of feeling around in the dark of his quarters for the light switch and then staring at himself in the bathroom mirror to be fully reassured that the reset had taken effect and that he was not in imminent danger of dying again. He checked the chronometer to be sure and was oddly relieved to see a familiar time staring back at him. He had another chance.

He wondered what had happened after he'd passed out. Had Phlox managed to save him, and dragged him on board a shuttle craft? It was slightly disturbing to think that he would never know, and even more so to know that it hadn't happened. Somewhere in a Sickbay cabinet was a hypospray of sedative, still full and ready for use. But it didn't matter; the reset had happened, and now he had a plan. He knew how to stop the temporal anomaly.

His hands were cold and clammy. Reed forced himself to think only about the task directly in front of him and no further: go to the bridge, persuade Archer to believe his story. _Calmly_ , he reminded himself. Not like last time.

He'd have to explain Tucker's disappearance, though, or the Captain would start a full-blown search, to hell with the consequences. Reed pushed away the frantic guilt that crammed itself into his stomach when he thought of Tucker. There was no time for it now, and later…there would _be_ no later for him, if everything went according to plan.

But for now, he had to make sure things did go according to plan. He did not pause as he passed Tucker's quarters on the way to the bridge.

"Malcolm? What are you doing here? You're not on duty until tomorrow."

"Captain," Reed said with admirable calm, "the Enterprise is about to be attacked."

* * *

"The Vulcan Science Directorate has determined that time travel is impossible."

"So we've heard," Reed said wearily.

He leaned against the tactical console, watching Archer pace. He had just finished relating his story to the bridge crew, who had received it as before in incredulous silence and now waited on the Captain's orders.

"What about Trip?" Archer asked, turning abruptly. Reed shrugged helplessly.

"I don't know, sir. Like I said, he could be restored if we fix the timeline. But I don't know." When Archer had inevitably failed to receive an answer to his hail to Tucker, and had discovered that the engineer was not only unresponsive, but in fact missing entirely from the ship, it had been all Reed could do to prevent him from starting a system-wide search. Reed had done his best to convey the impression that Tucker's restoration was likely once the timeline was fixed, but he could tell Archer recognised the dodging for what it was.

The one small positive about Tucker's absence was that no one had questioned Reed about how the temporal anomaly would be ended. Reed had hedged more successfully on this subject, managing to suggest without expressly stating that the destruction of the enemy ship was synonymous with the end of the time loop. So far, everyone had been too distracted by the imminent attack and Tucker's disappearance to dig too deeply on a topic that Reed seemed to be experienced with and therefore presumably had a plan for.

"And if not?" Archer asked. His rigid face gave nothing away.

"I don't know, sir," Reed repeated quietly.

"Captain," T'Pol said, "it is likely that the internal sensors are malfunctioning. We should conduct a ship-wide –"

"I heard you the first time," Archer said, silencing her. "What do you propose to do, Lieutenant? You said the phase cannon modifications last time didn't work. What do you suggest?"

"The modifications worked fine, Captain," Reed corrected. " _I_ didn't. I wasn't –" he twitched, feeling heat rising in his face. "I wasn't fast enough. But the phase cannon modifications were only a defensive measure. We need something more than that. Sir, I was thinking if we modify a torpedo to have a large enough yield and fire it concurrently with the modified phase cannons, we may be able to punch through their shielding. The problem with tachyon shielding is that the more energy it loses, the more powerful it gets – theoretically allowing it to self-sustain indefinitely while potentially even providing power to the ship. But if we can throw enough energy at the shield at once, the tachyon particles that make up the shield should absorb energy, causing them to slow down and therefore weakening the field."

"How large a yield would it take?"

"I…I'm not sure," Reed had to admit. The idea of a modified torpedo had occurred to him shortly before the attack in the previous iteration, but it had been too late by then to investigate the possibilities and at this stage the concept was purely theoretical.

"0.73 megatons, Captain," T'Pol said coolly. Both Reed and Archer stared at her. "I have analysed the radiation which Lieutenant Reed claims is a cloaking field," T'Pol elaborated, as if there were nothing unusual about her apparent reversal of opinion. "Based on the quantity of tachyon particles necessary to produce this level of radiation and the energy necessary to destroy a single particle, I estimate that an explosion of between 0.65 and 0.73 megatons would deteriorate this tachyon field. Assuming, of course, that the Lieutenant's theory is accurate," she added sceptically.

"How would you modify a single torpedo to have that kind of yield?" Archer wondered doubtfully. Reed hesitated, but once again T'Pol came smoothly to his aid.

"A relatively small amount of a radioactive isotope can be used to trigger nuclear fission. I believe this ship carries such an isotope."

"Plutonium," Reed said. "Yes, but only the isotopes plutonium 239 through 241 are fissile. We don't carry those. They're too unstable. We use plutonium-238 in certain systems and in disruptor rifles, but it wouldn't be useful in creating explosives."

"Not in its current state," T'Pol concurred. "However, it is possible to transmute plutonium-238 to a different isotope."

Reed eyed her suspiciously. "Not without a massive nuclear reaction."

"The technology is Vulcan," she explained. "Radioactive substances can be transformed into a higher isotope by using a focused burst of neutron radiation to saturate the particles with neutrons."

"Without blowing up the entire quadrant or poisoning everyone on this ship?" Reed asked doubtingly.

"Indeed," T'Pol said drily. "As you know, the warp engine emits low levels of neutron radiation. What I am suggesting is simply a matter of concentrating this radiation in a single burst. It should be possible to create such a burst by opening one the antimatter injector valves to increase pressure in the warp core. The increased radiation will be directed at a point exactly opposite the open injector valve."

"And you think we could create a 0.73 megaton yield with only what we've got in disruptors on the ship?"

"As you suggested, Lieutenant, even a small amount of an unstable isotope can cause a massive explosion."

"I don't mean to interrupt," Archer broke in, "but would someone mind explaining what you're talking about?"

Distracted, Reed turned away from T'Pol. "Sub-Commander T'Pol thinks we can use the plutonium isotope found in some of our disruptor rifles to create a modified torpedo – a nuclear bomb, basically. The isotope we have isn't the one we need, so we'd have to use radiation from the warp core to convert it. But if Sub-Commander T'Pol thinks it can be done…"

"The procedure is not without risk," T'Pol conceded. "However, if, as you believe, Captain, the Enterprise is about to be attacked, it would seem that the significantly greater risk is in doing nothing."

"Wait a minute." Archer raised a hand. "T'Pol, I thought you didn't believe in all of this. The Vulcan Science Directorate –"

"I do not believe in time travel, Captain," the Vulcan said calmly. "That does not mean that I am blind to the danger if Lieutenant Reed is correct about the existence of a cloaked vessel. Ignoring potential threats is illogical."

* * *

Reed sat at his desk and stared at the blank computer monitor in front of him. It was 2329; the last two and a half hours had been a whirlwind of activity. After T'Pol had declared her admittedly unenthusiastic support for the modifications to the Enterprise, Archer had made a ship-wide announcement that was brief and to-the-point: the Enterprise was in danger and emergency protocols were being instituted in preparation for a possible attack. All hands were to report to battle stations and give Sub-Commander T'Pol and Lieutenant Reed their full cooperation.

If there had been questions about these orders, or about the unusual modifications that began shortly thereafter, no one had asked them to an officer's face. Archer was for the most part a lenient and understanding CO, but in emergencies he expected the best efforts from everyone involved with no time wasted on idle gossip.

The Captain himself and Commander Kelby had headed up modifications of the phase cannons while Sub-Commander T'Pol, two engineers, and another crewman from the science department removed the plutonium cells from a dozen disruptor rifles and began working to transform the plutonium-238 into a much less stable and more useful form, plutonium-239. Reed and several of his armoury personnel as well as an Ensign from engineering had configured the targeting sensors and set about modifying a torpedo casing to become a nuclear warhead.

Risky as the proceedings were, Reed was nearly as concerned about the consequences of actually using the warhead. If they even had the chance to use it, the Enterprise would be lucky to escape severe damaged. Still, Reed thought, better a damaged than a destroyed Enterprise.

It was a blessing in disguise that Reed couldn't be the one to man the phase cannons this time. He'd had to admit to the Captain the reason for this – namely, that last time he'd almost passed out over the controls from a headache and he couldn't be sure that it wouldn't happen again. Archer had, on Reed's recommendation, chosen Crewman Alex as his bridge officer at the tactical station. The irony was not lost on Reed. However, mortified as he was by having to admit his own incompetence to handle the weapons during the attack, it had provided Reed with the opportunity to discreetly slip away while his armoury crew loaded the plutonium-packed torpedo, which he and T'Pol had at last finished, into a torpedo launcher.

Reed had managed to give the impression to Archer and T'Pol that he was planning to remain in the armoury, while convincing his armoury staff that he would be on the bridge. Consequently, he'd been able to make his disappearance quite easily. He had his own particular element of the ship's defence to carry out on his own. Namely, to make off with a shuttlepod the moment the attack started and end the time loop. He wouldn't have time to see whether the Enterprise was victorious; he would have to trust Archer and T'Pol to take care of the rest.

The problem he'd encountered in previous iterations, Reed reflected, was not properly relating the scope of the threat. That had partly been due to his own lack of information on it. Still, he berated himself for not recruiting his and Tucker's entire departments to help with the modifications before. It would have been much easier. Tucker might still be alive. He understood why he hadn't, though – in previous iterations, he had viewed the enemy ship as first an obstacle to be avoided, then as an evil that had necessarily to be dealt with as swiftly and silently as possible. It had taken Reed the previous iteration and the loss of Tucker to realise that the grey ship could not to be held off until it backed down, but had instead to be utterly destroyed. It was too dangerous. Hence the deployment of all the Enterprise's resources.

Reed brooded momentarily over Tucker. It had been his own fault, his own damn fault. He'd passed out over the controls and Tucker had died because of his ineptitude.

Reed did feel a sick sort of comfort at the fact that he'd be paying to end this nightmare with his own life. He'd taken his friend's life; it was only right for him to pay with his own.

For some reason, though, he'd returned to his quarters instead of waiting in the shuttlebay. A nagging thought told him he really was obliged to leave some kind of note, if only for his family's sake. Well…for his sister Madeline's sake, if he was being honest. Starfleet would notify his parents. Reed had not spoken with them in years and he doubted that a few hastily-penned lines would do much to rectify the damage done to their relationship while he was still a young man. But he owed it to his sister to leave some kind of explanation.

"Computer, begin recording."

What was there to say? He couldn't give any details. The whole event was sure to be classified, and even if his conscience gave him the liberty to disclose the truth in his message, Starfleet would not pass on a note, however personal it might be, which contained confidential information. What was left could be only vague and cryptic at best. Probably it would be worse than nothing.

"Hello, Madeline," he started uneasily. "If you've received this message – well, you know already. I'm sure Starfleet has informed you of the circumstances of my death." He swallowed hard. "I can't tell you much, for…a variety of reasons. But I want you to know that this is not what it looks like. There are reasons I have to do this. I don't want to. I want to live."

He realised only then how true it was, and how damned terrified he was of what he had to do. His hands shook and he waited a few moments to be sure that his voice would not shake too.

"If there were any other way, I would take it. But if I don't do this, other people will die. I'm sorry I can't explain any better. But –" he stumbled over the unfamiliar words. "– I love you, Madeline. Computer, end recording."

So much for eloquence. He was out of time. Reed left the message on his computer screen and walked out without a backward glance.

He passed several crew members hurrying along the corridors as he went. Their faces seemed blank and unfamiliar. Reed nodded tightly to the ones who greeted him. He sealed the doors of the shuttlebay behind him and climbed into Shuttlepod Two. He did not have long to wait, but the time inched by sluggishly.

What if the torpedo didn't work? What if he ended the time loop with the destruction of the Enterprise? What if the reset happened before he reached the star? Doubts trickled uneasily into his determination.

 _You can't turn back now,_ he told himself grimly. _There's no choice._ That wasn't reassuring.

The Enterprise shuddered. Reed's adrenaline surged. His fingers trembled with nervous excitement as he entered the launch sequence into the shuttlepod's computer.

Shuttlepod Two dropped out of the Enterprise's belly into the middle of a warzone, affording Reed the unexpected opportunity to see his and Tucker's handiwork in action. The grey ship circled as Enterprise moved in an intricate evasive dance, firing a thick red streak of energy with exemplary precision into every blue ribbon of light cast by the enemy ship. Where the energy bolts touched, space exploded in a ball of white and orange. Reed dropped the nose of the shuttlecraft straight down to distance himself as quickly as possible from the battle. To his relief, the grey ship paid no notice.

Reed's hands were unsteady on the controls, but that would not be a problem. He didn't have to be exact.

A star was a large target to aim for, after all.

* * *

"Captain!" T'Pol called above the shrill of the tactical alert's alarm and the roar of weapon fire that shook the ship. "I am detecting an unauthorized shuttle launch."

"What? Who?" Archer gripped the armrests of his chair against the ship's bucking.

"The shuttlebay was accessed with Lieutenant Reed's access code," T'Pol said.

"Open a channel, Hoshi!"

The Enterprise slewed sideways as Mayweather evaded the grey ship's attack. "We can't keep this up much longer, sir!" Crewman Alex shouted. "Permission to fire the torpedo, sir?"

"Shuttlepod Two may be caught up in the explosion," T'Pol warned. Sparks burst from a conduit behind her as it ruptured. "The Enterprise should be protected by its hull plating, but a shuttlepod's hull may not be sufficient to withstand the blast."

"We don't have time to wait!" Alex screamed.

"Do not fire!" Archer ordered. "Hoshi?"

"Channel open, sir."

"Lieutenant, what are you doing? Return to the Enterprise immediately. That's an order."

"No response, sir," Hoshi shouted, clinging to her station to remain upright.

"Where's he going?" Archer demanded. "T'Pol?"

"Lieutenant Reed," T'Pol said, "is on a collision course with the nearest star."

* * *

 _"_ _Lieutenant, what are you doing? Return to the Enterprise immediately. That's an order."_

"No sir," Reed murmured softly. He did not open his end of the comm link. In the background of Archer's voice, he could hear the Enterprise returning fire upon the enemy ship. It was just as well, he thought, that Archer would be too busy with the enemy ship to come after him. Even if he had time to explain what he was doing to the Captain, he knew that Archer would never allow it. The Captain would insist on finding a different way.

There was no other way, though. Not this time. He urged the shuttle forward at full impulse, watching through dazzled eyes as the star in front of him grew slowly larger. Despite his fear, he was awed by its beauty and power. This wouldn't be such a bad way to go.

 _"_ _Lieutenant!"_ Archer sounded torn between anger and dismay. _"Turn that shuttle around now!"_ Static crackled over the channel as the Enterprise either received or dealt a blow – dealt it, hopefully. The firefight was far behind Reed; he couldn't see what was happening. The star's glaring yellow light ahead of him consumed his vision.

 _"_ _Malcolm!"_ Archer's tone changed. It was almost pleading. _"Don't do this. There's no reason –"_

Reed closed the link, cutting off Archer's transmission. It actually was too late to change his mind now. The shuttlepod wouldn't escape the star's gravity on its own at such close range. The small craft was growing hot despite its environmental controls. Sweat stung Reed's eyes and slicked his hands.

The shuttlepod bucked suddenly as a tremendous shockwave struck it from behind. Reed clutched the controls desperately to keep his balance. His fast-dying sensors showed only one ship behind him; the other had vanished. He couldn't tell which ship had been destroyed. He prayed it was not the Enterprise, because if it had been then he was about to permanently fix her destruction in the timeline. All he could do was trust that his modifications to the ship's weapons had worked.

Ahead of him, the star's heat blazed with unbearable brightness. He could not see anything else.

So much for life flashing before your eyes, Reed thought vaguely. All that was flashing before his eyes was the white-hot glow of a star and its reflection off surfaces within the overtaxed, failing shuttlepod that threatened to implode at any second. He closed his eyes but the brightness shone through his eyelids undiluted.

It was so beautiful, despite the burning pain from the rising heat of the shuttlepod controls. He was so fascinated by the brilliance that he barely noticed his discomfort. The star was breath-taking in its power. Literally, perhaps – Reed struggled to draw heated air into his lungs. Dizziness surged upward, loosening his grip on the controls. It didn't matter, though, if he lost control of the shuttle now; the star would do the rest for him. His work was done.

The shuttlepod jerked backward so hard and suddenly that Reed was thrown forward into the controls, smashing his face against the hot metal. He slid to the floor, bleeding and fighting to stay conscious. Distantly, he was aware that some force was pulling the craft backward, towing him away from the star. He managed with a great effort to lift his head toward the rear viewing port. His eyes, dazzled by the brightness, took a minute to relay an image to Reed's aching brain.

The Enterprise loomed over him, her grapplers affixed firmly to the back of the shuttlepod.

Reed felt no elation at seeing his ship whole and knowing that the mysterious grey enemy vessel had been destroyed. Horror and desperation clawed at him; if he was not killed by the star, this would be no success at all. The Enterprise would be condemning herself to eternal, repeated destruction. Reed scrambled to the comm system.

"Let me go!" he screamed. "You can't do this! This shuttle must be destroyed, let me go!"

There was no answer. Perhaps the Enterprise's communications had been damaged. Reed struggled against the roaring in his ears and reached for the phase weapon controls, working frantically to fire on the grappler lines that held him fast, or even on the Enterprise. The weapons were offline and refused to respond to his scrambling efforts.

But – the grapplers had a magnetic seal that held them to their target. If he could reverse the polarity of the hull plating –

The air in the shuttlepod was growing imperceptibly cooler as the craft was towed slowly further and further from the star. He had to escape, he had to get to the star before the timeline reset! Reed pounded madly at the controls, manually entering the commands to switch the hull plating polarity, keeping it constantly rotating. He felt the shuttlepod quiver as the grappler claws struggled stubbornly to maintain their hold. Someone on the Enterprise was working to keep up with him, rotating the polarity of the grapplers to keep up with Reed's efforts. Someone with experience, apparently, because the claws slipped but refused to be thrown off entirely.

"NO!" Reed shouted, crashing his hands down on the panel in front of him.

 _"_ _Stop fightin', Malcolm!"_ the comm shouted at him. _"Dammit!"_

Blank shock froze Reed in place at the sound of a voice he'd never expected to hear again. In the cessation of his efforts to free the shuttlepod, the grappler's hold locked into place and the craft jerked backwards again. The control panel seemed to leap upward at him and the world went black.

* * *

Sound lapped faintly at Reed as his consciousness drifted back unhurriedly. He heard indistinct voices at a distance, though not what they were saying or whose they were. Cautiously he opened his eyes a crack to find a grey ceiling staring down on him. It was not what he'd expected. He wasn't sure what he'd expected, but it hadn't been to find himself in Sickbay.

He hadn't made it, then. The Enterprise had pulled him away from the star. His memory of the flight in the shuttlepod was hazy – something about it nagged at him vaguely. The flight had been critically important, for some reason.

Reed struggled to recall the importance of flying into the star. There had been something essential about it; he had the awful sensation that something terrible was going to happen because he was still alive. What was it? The Enterprise was whole, and –

And it would not be for much longer. He'd failed to destroy the drug. It did not matter that the grey ship was gone and the Enterprise whole; the reset would happen again, demolishing all the work Reed had done to keep his ship and his crew safe.

Reed despaired. He felt utterly defeated. He'd tried so hard this time. He'd put every ounce of strategy and determination and bravery he had into trying _just once more_ and he'd been so sure that he would protect his ship, albeit at the cost of his own life. And somehow, he had failed yet again. He was too tired and sick at heart to resist the pulsing sting behind his eyes, so he shut his eyes against the tears that blurred his vision. They were all going to die. He'd saved them, he'd saved the ship, and yet they were still going to die again in the very next reset.

But he had to try again. There was no choice. Sickened by the thought, Reed pushed himself up slowly on the bed and rubbed the back of a hand across his eyes to clear them. The motion brought a sharp sting of pain in his stiff hand, and something hard and plastic jabbed at his face. Reed gave a soft hiss of pain and examined the intravenous port taped firmly to the back of his bandaged hand. Well, that had to go. He turned his head away as he yanked it out with a sharp, painful pull. A monitor behind him started beeping. Reed pressed a thumb against the globe of blood swelling out through the gauze wrapped around his arms and hands, wondering briefly why he was bandaged.

He felt oddly at a loss as to what to do next. He didn't even know the time or when the next reset was due. The chronometer by the biobed had been removed, and opaque white curtains around the bed blocked the rest of Sickbay from his view.

"Ah, Mr. Reed. You're awake," Phlox observed. Reed jumped with surprise and turned as the doctor opened the curtain. The Denobulan's expression was an odd combination of relief, concern, and apprehension tucked behind wary professional calm. Then someone came up behind Phlox and Reed forgot the doctor entirely.

Tucker stepped through the curtain, looking tired and anxious but very much alive. "Hey, Malcolm," he said softly. "How're yew feelin'?"

The words did not even register. Reed's mind seemed to have shut down.

Tucker was _alive_.

It was not relief he felt, nor even happiness. Pure disbelief blocked out all other sensations. "What…" he started lamely, unsure what he even wanted to ask. Tucker approached him tentatively.

"Yew okay? Sorry t' startle yew…"

"What time is it?" Reed asked blankly. Tucker gave a strained but genuine grin.

"It's over, Mal. It's 0400."

It was over. The time for the reset had come and gone.

Somehow, inexplicably, the time loop had ended. The grey ship was gone; the Enterprise was whole, and her crew alive; there had been no reset. And Tucker was alive.

Relief came so suddenly and overwhelmingly it was painful. Or perhaps what he felt _was_ pain; now that the crisis was finally over, his mind could process more than just the next plan. He could process what he'd seen. What he'd done. He could take in the fact that he'd watched the crew who had become his family die over and over again. He'd broken his own code of ethics and violated his honour in his last-ditch efforts to save them. He'd been convinced he had killed his best friend. He'd tried to kill himself, believing it was the only way to stop the temporal anomaly.

And now, after all of that, it was over.

His eyes stung with emotion as strong as it was unexpected. Reed covered his face with his hands, too relieved and worn to care if he made a fool of himself. Tucker came over and put an arm around him.

"It's okay, Mal. It's over."

"I know." Reed clung to him unashamedly, trembling with adrenaline let-down. "I know."

* * *

When Reed had regained his composure enough to feel self-conscious, the engineer sat on the edge of the biobed with a hand on his shoulder. Reed wiped his face embarrassedly on one sleeve. He noticed that Phlox had discreetly retreated from the enclosed space around his bed.

"How did you – what happened?"

"We're still workin' on that," Tucker admitted. "We think it's got t' do with th' warp core breach – the temporal anomaly, I mean."

"You remember?" Reed asked incredulously.

"Everythin' after Phlox gave me th' antihistamine," Tucker said. He grew serious then, a little scared even. "Malcolm," he said softly, "I didn' know it was that bad. I'm sorry."

"What?" Reed stared at Tucker's anxious face, completely confused. "What are you talking about?"

Tucker shifted uncomfortably and looked like he wanted to be somewhere else. "Yew tried to kill yerself, Mal. Don't yew remember?"

Reed started laughing, a hysterical laugh of combined amusement and giddy relief that he still felt. Tucker gawked at him as if he feared for Reed's sanity, which only made Reed laugh harder.

"I can – explain," he panted at last, when he got his breath back. "It's not…what you think."

"Good." Tucker was openly relieved. "I was hopin' yew'd say that. 'Cos I'd hate t' think…"

He left the thought unfinished and instead squeezed Reed's shoulders lightly. Reed leaned into the friendly touch and closed his eyes, still smiling but suddenly exhausted.

When he woke up again, he'd reassure himself again of Tucker's existence and the Enterprise's safety. He'd have something to eat, maybe chat with Phlox and put up a token protest about being kept in Sickbay. Then, maybe, he would explain his actions. He'd give a full report to the Captain, and to Tucker – the man deserved it. But for now, he could sleep.

He had time.


	13. Epilogue

Disclaimer: Me no own.

AN: Yay! We're done! I hope you had as much fun reading this story as I did writing it. I wrote this epilogue to tie things up - I had a clear picture in my mind of what was going on during the story, but I realise there are some details that are...obscure. Hopefully everything will make sense after this. If not, use your imagination to tie up the loose threads. :)

By the way, I'm not a hardcore Reed/Sato shipper. I don't know how those bits sneaked in. I guess they showed up when I wasn't looking...I'll leave it to you to decide what Hoshi's true motives were.

* * *

 _After considerable study and discussion, we have compiled an analysis of the events experienced by the Enterprise and Lieutenant Reed, as detailed above, based on the research we performed with the information and instrumentation available to us. However, we have enclosed the full sensor logs of the Enterprise and both shuttlepods, as well as all our scans of the Anachron System, a schematic of the modifications to our weapons systems, all the available data on the drug found in Lieutenant Reed and Commander Tucker (Cyprexian), and the full reports from Sub-Commander T'Pol, Commander Tucker, Lieutenant Reed, and Doctor Phlox for further study. I believe that we may never fully understand what we now refer to as "The Anachron Incident." However, we have attempted to explain the phenomenon to the best of our ability._

 _Prior to his away mission on the Zytexian science vessel, Lieutenant Reed was administered a delayed-release dosage of the antihistamine medication Cyproheptadine as a preventative measure against possible allergies. While on the away mission, both Commander Tucker and Lieutenant Reed were exposed to several previously-unknown chemicals found in perfumes used by Zytexians. One of these substances accumulated in both Tucker and Reed over the 48-hour period while they were on the ship, as a result of repeated exposure. This chemical bonded with the Cyproheptadine in Lieutenant Reed's body to form a compound which Doctor Phlox has named Cyprexian in tongue-in-cheek reference to the names of the antihistamine and the alien species. Cyprexian is a powerful narcotic with hallucinogenic effects; in addition, it appears to have a dampening effect on tachyon radiation, which allowed Lieutenant Reed and later Commander Tucker to withstand temporal reversals while retaining memory of previous timelines. Interestingly, the reverse seems to be true; a single exposure to tachyon radiation caused the cessation of the hallucinogenic symptoms of Cyprexian experienced by both Tucker and Reed. Neither of them suffered hallucinations after the first reversal following their exposure to the drug. Lieutenant Reed reports experiencing a headache, but it is unclear whether this was a symptom of the Cyprexian or caused by fatigue. The enclosed report written by Sub-Commander T'Pol and Doctor Phlox describes the properties of Cyprexian that may contribute to its dampening effects on tachyon radiation, as well as examining the possible uses for this substance._

 _Although Lieutenant Reed came to the conclusion that the presence of this drug was in some way responsible for the temporal reversals, we believe that this deduction was erroneous. According to Sub-Commander T'Pol and Commander Tucker, the combination of warp plasma with elevated levels of tachyons was more likely the cause. The destruction of the Enterprise's warp core with tachyon-based weapons appears to have triggered a rip or fissure in space-time. The delay between this explosion and the temporal reversals, as experienced by Lieutenant Reed, remains unexplained. Commander Tucker points out that "we are dealing with a temporal anomaly; why shouldn't there be extra chunks of time as well as missing portions?" and I find myself inclined to agree with his perspective. By preventing the destruction of our warp core, therefore, Lieutenant Reed was able to end – or rather, paradoxically, prevent – the temporal anomaly._

 _It is somewhat unclear why the temporal reversals began at 2058. However, Doctor Phlox has suggested that they did_ not _begin at this time. He believes that this is the time at which the Cyprexian in Lieutenant Reed's bloodstream began to affect him; therefore, the temporal reversals may have begun much earlier, and Lieutenant Reed may simply not remember anything before this point because his memory was not preserved by the drug until 2058 hours. If this is the case, each "iteration" of the timeline may have begun long before Lieutenant Reed was aware of it – perhaps even before we reached the Anachron System. We cannot draw any definite conclusions on this account due to lack of information, and it seems pointless to delve into purely hypothetical discussion._

 _As for Commander Tucker's disappearance and subsequent reappearance…all we know with certainty is that as of 2104 hours in the current timeline, internal sensors showed that he was not aboard the Enterprise. A brief search of the ship confirmed this. Approximately thirty seconds after the destruction of the enemy ship, Tucker hailed the bridge to ask what was happening. He woke in his quarters with no memory of being missing or, indeed, of anything after his apparent death in a previous timeline. We suspect that the destruction of the other ship somehow triggered a reversal of the events it had caused, including Tucker's disappearance or "death." Possibly, the explosion of our plutonium torpedo created another temporal anomaly that engulfed the ship and erased its effects in our timeline._

 _Lastly, and perhaps most simply, is the question of the enemy vessel itself. We have been unable to determine its origin or the species to which it belongs. Sub-Commander T'Pol notes that the Romulan Star Empire has been known to employ tachyon-based cloaking technology; however, we have been unable to link the ship in any other way to the Empire. Sub-Commander T'Pol believes that this ship belongs to a species we have not previously encountered. Its design, certainly, was unlike any Romulan ship we have knowledge of. Additionally, the cloaking technology emitted high levels of Cherenkov radiation into subspace, unlike Romulan cloaking devices. Finally, its weapons seems well advanced beyond that of the Romulans we have encountered._

 _Why this ship was present in the Anachron System and when it entered, as well as its reasons for attacking us, remain unknown. Lieutenant Reed reports that on certain occasions the Enterprise's sensors detected a ship entering the Anachron System at 2344 hours, which he initially assumed was the aggressor; however, he later discovered that the cloaked "Anachron ship" was in the system well prior to this time. As the ship detected at 2344 hours was not picked up on sensors in the current timeline after the Anachron ship was destroyed, we believe that this was a sensor illusion generated by the cloaked ship. (See Lieutenant Reed's report for further details.)_

 _We have remained vigilant in scanning for elevated Cherenkov radiation, but so far we have found no sign of other tachyon-cloaked vessels within scanning range. Sub-Commander T'Pol, Commander Tucker, and Lieutenant Reed, however, are adamant that tachyon scans should be instituted as standard protocol on th Enterprise, and I have authorised their request. I would recommend this as a protocol to our Vulcan allies, also, as a precaution against any encounters with this species._

 _As a side note, Sub-Commander T'Pol wishes me to add that the Vulcan Science Directorate has determined that time travel is impossible. In light of our recent discoveries, I would like to submit an official recommendation that this conclusion be revisited. Sub-Commander T'Pol, albeit reluctantly, agrees that the issue of time travel may need "reinvestigation."_

 _Further speculation on my part regarding this incident would delve into the theoretical and unprovable; I believe it is best to yield continued conjecture to the Starfleet scientists who will examine the data enclosed with this report. Therefore, I will end my own suppositions by saying that whatever the scientific explanations behind this phenomenon, it is a fact that Commander Tucker and especially Lieutenant Reed displayed exemplary courage, determination, and coolness in the face of extraordinary opposition. I hereby nominate Lieutenant Reed to be considered for the Starfleet Medal of Valour for his actions above and beyond the call of duty in the "Anachron Incident." I have attached my letter of recommendation along with this report._

 _Captain Jonathan Archer, Enterprise NX-01_

* * *

Reed was smiling slightly as he finished reading Captain Archer's report and set the padd aside on his desk. When he'd finally gotten around to thinking about ordinary, everyday necessities like writing arduous reports, he had been reluctant to include everything that had happened, given that it included two attempted mutinies, an attack on Doctor Phlox, and an accidental suicide among other questionable actions. After considerable thought and discomfort, he'd finally gone to Archer and poured out the whole story, leaving it in the Captain's hands to decide what he should report. Archer had been amazingly understanding about the whole story – granted, hearing about a mutiny was very different from experiencing it, but still, he'd been remarkably calm – and had recommended that Reed include everything he could remember.

"After all," Archer had said with a wry grin, "they can't do anything about it, because it technically never happened to anyone except you. Even if Starfleet tried to court-martial you, they couldn't convict you without witnesses." He'd gone serious then. "I don't think they'll give you a hard time about it, Malcolm, given the circumstances. And if they do, I'll go to bat for you one hundred percent. Personally, I think you deserve nothing less than the Medal of Valour."

In the end, Reed had not received the Medal of Valour – ironically, for the same reason that he hadn't been court-martialled for his attempted mutiny. While Starfleet brass acknowledged that Reed had demonstrated extraordinary valour, they felt that the Medal could not be awarded because – again, technically speaking – the events for which Reed was being commended had never actually happened. Reed had not been bothered by this, as he didn't feel he deserved the Medal anyway, but Tucker had been furious.

"What they mean," he'd raged, "is that they don' want t' give yew a medal fer somethin' they can't publicize. An' they're too afraid of offendin' the Vulcans t' say fer sure that time travel is real."

Tucker's indignation on his behalf had been appreciated, but on the whole Reed was glad that the incident had not been widely publicized. It had taken him a while to come to terms with his own actions, some of which had seemed justifiable at the time but in retrospect appeared to be crimes of the most inexcusable magnitude. He'd had plenty of time for that, though; Phlox had taken him off duty for medical reasons, despite Reed's explanations and insistence that his attempted suicide had been only due to the belief that his own death was necessary to end the temporal anomaly. Tucker had been allowed to return to duty after only two days, but Phlox had not even released Reed to quarters for almost four days. Part of that, admittedly, was a result of the injuries he'd sustained while piloting the shuttlepod – a mild concussion from when his head collided with the control panel and moderate burns on his arms where they'd touched the hot metal, in addition to heat exhaustion, severe dehydration, and slight retinal damage from overexposure to the star's brightness. However, Phlox had kept him off duty for much longer than Reed considered physically necessary.

"Take some time to recover, hm?" Phlox had told Reed when he complained. "You've been through a traumatic experience. That's not something to bounce back from in a day, Mr. Reed."

Reed had drawn the line when Phlox suggested that he speak with a counsellor. "I don't need therapy, Doctor!" However, he had reluctantly agreed to two weeks off-duty, with daily check-ups in Sickbay, when it became clear that Phlox was perfectly willing to appeal to the Captain. Reed guessed that the two weeks were more of an excuse for the Doctor to observe him than a period of necessary rest. Phlox, Reed suspected, had been understandably concerned by his emotional outburst upon seeing Tucker when he woke up in Sickbay. Thankfully the Denobulan had never mentioned this, if it was the case – after twelve or fourteen hours of sleep, Reed had awoken appalled at his behaviour. To his gratitude, both Tucker and Phlox had the good sense not to mention the episode. And apparently he'd passed inspections on the mental health score, because Phlox had approved him to return to duty effective today.

Archer had been relieved to find that Reed's attempt to fly Shuttlepod Two into a star had had a rational explanation not related to mental illness or a rash, stupid decision. He had not been pleased, on the other hand, that Reed considered a crew member – any crew member – an acceptable sacrifice. He'd showed up in Sickbay after Reed had slept almost a day and woken much more himself, and lectured Reed for a good ten minutes. His monologue had been without heat, however; he'd been concerned more than angry.

"You nearly lost me a perfectly good shuttlepod," Archer had finished, scowling. "And you know what else you almost lost me? A damn fine Tactical Officer, that's what. I won't tolerate that, Lieutenant, not even from you."

Sheepishly, Reed had agreed that he'd be more careful in future. "Provided the future stays where it ought to be, sir," he'd added in a moment of daring. That had made Archer laugh, breaking the tension of the moment. The Captain had shaken his hand and completed Reed's embarrassment by gravely and eloquently praising his bravery and thanking him for the "exemplary service" he had rendered to the Enterprise and her crew. Despite being embarrassing, the Captain's glowing commendation had left Reed warm with pleased pride.

All in all, Reed was of the opinion that things might have worked out much worse. Even if he was disgusted by his own incompetence, a chunk of his self-respect was a small price to pay to have his crew alive: Archer, T'Pol, Phlox, Mayweather, Tucker, Sato…

Reed considered Sato with the slightest hint of warmth in his cheeks. He could still remember – vividly – her kiss, while he was injured and almost ready to give up.

Rationally, Reed knew that her kiss had been the product of desperation on her part. She'd seen that he wanted to quit; she'd been trying in the only way she had left to force him to keep trying. Sato was intelligent, too, and she'd have known that she would not remember kissing him. Sato knew him well enough to have known that he would never tell her what she'd done. As far as she had been concerned, the kiss would never have happened. It had been her way of pushing him onward when he was ready to stop trying. For those reasons, it had been the one thing he'd left out of his report to Starfleet.

 _It meant nothing,_ he told himself firmly.

He wondered absently how she would react if he asked her to go to Movie Night with him.

Reed's door chime chirped, pulling him from his wandering thoughts with a start. "Come in." He swivelled the chair around as Tucker entered.

"Hey, Malcolm."

"Commander." He started to rise, but Tucker waved him back down.

"Don' bother. How was yer first day back?"

It had been rather odd, after so long off-duty. Reed's armoury staff had caught wind of the fact that he was returning and had shown up en mass to give him a standing ovation. All of the armoury personnel and MACOs, even those off duty, had been there. Reed had been touched, though he hadn't admitted it.

"It was…" he searched for an adequate word to put to the day. It had been wonderful to be back, and though he was eagerly anticipating some action sooner or later, he'd been inordinately pleased that the ship had run across nothing more exciting during the course of the day than a small, uninhabited Minshara-class planet, which they'd stopped to scan. "…uneventful," he finished after a moment's reflection, allowing a small, blissful grin to spread over his face.

"Sounds good t' me," Trip grinned back at him.

"And do you know what the best part was, Commander?" Reed queried.

"What's that, Loo-tenant?"

"It only happened once."


End file.
